Exploring Meteor Impacts: Insights and Curiosities
This data visualization explores the recorded meteor impacts on Earth, offering perspective on these celestial events while sparking curiosity about their potential impact on our everyday lives.
Data Description
The dataset contains information about meteorite landings and is sourced from NASA’s public datasets. It includes various variables related to each meteorite landing, providing details such as the meteorite name, ID, name type, recclass (meteorite classification), mass in grams, whether it fell or was found, the year of the landing, the latitude and longitude of the landing site, and the GeoLocation in the form of coordinates.
Data Cleaning
The dataset contained both ‘Fell’ and ‘Found’ classifications for the meteorites. The ‘Found’ classification had many discrepancies throughout. For example many of the coordinates for ‘Found’ meteorites were just (0,0), which poses data validity questions and also is not helpful for our visualizations. Furthermore, many of the other data aspects such as mass were unavailable for ‘Found’ meteorites. For these reasons ‘Found’ data points were cleaned from the data and omitted from our final report.
Variables in the Dataset
Variable Name
Description
'name'
The name of the meteorite.
'id'
A unique identifier for each meteorite.
'nametype'
Indicates whether the meteorite is "Valid" or "Relict".
'recclass'
The classification of the meteorite.
'mass (g)'
The mass of the meteorite in grams.
'fall'
Specifies whether the meteorite "Fell"/"Found".
'reclat'
The latitude coordinates of the landing site.
'reclong'
The longitude coordinates of the landing site.
'GeoLocation'
A combination of latitude and longitude coordinates.
We also used GeoJSON to draw the map and the countries boundaries.
To do this we used an open source GeoJSON file found: https://datahub.io/core/geo-countries
Design Rationale
Map
Primarily, the map visualization turns the series of coordinate points from the data into a clean and ingestible visualization depicting the distribution of recorded meteors that have hit the earth. The data spans from 860 AD to the present day. Yet again, it is crucial to take into account that this data does not represent every meteor that has hit earth during this time period – it only represents recorded meteorites that have hit the earth during this time period. Understandably, the data distribution is skewed towards major population centers and developed countries. Both areas with increased ability of witnessing and documenting meteorites. Another large part of my rationale for the chosen visualization type is a geographical map. This decision is justified because meteor impacts are inherently spatial events, and a map allows viewers to quickly grasp the distribution and geographical patterns of these impacts.
Position
The primary visual channel used in this map visualization is position. Each meteor impact event is represented by a point on the map, with its latitude and longitude coordinates determining its position.
Size
Size is used as a secondary visual channel to convey additional information. The size of each point on the map can be used to encode another dimension of data, the mass and size of impact. Larger points indicate more significant impacts with greater mass, while smaller points represent less significant impacts with smaller mass. This was all linearly scaled.
Colour Scheme
The decision to use red to color the dots (our main mark) was twofold. First, the color red is common to depict explosions or impacts, similar to those of the meteors depicted. Second, The red contrasts with the background of the map, a purposeful decision to try to make the data really ‘pop’ off the screen.
Bar Chart
The bar chart aims to visualize a clear comparison of meteorite counts across different U.S. states. Each bar represents a state, and the height of the bar corresponds to the counts of meteorites fell and found in that state. States with higher meteorite counts might be considered as having a potentially high risk of meteorite impacts. Different from the scatterplot, the bar chart provides a clear and immediate visual comparison of the data, with the height of the bar directly representing the number of meteorites for each state.
Bar Orientation
We initially tried a 45 degree angle for vertical bar orientation to save space, but we found out that displaying the state names using Alpha codes in a horizontal bar format is more efficient.
Sorting
Since our purpose was to highlight meteorite impacts in each state, we sorted by meteorite counts in descending order, allowing viewers to quickly identify and compare. An alternative sorting (e.g. alphabetical) could be considered based on viewers' needs.
Colour
We utilized color to distinguish between different states. However, since we have to color all the states, we used the “schemePaired’ color scheme to ensure all states are easily distinguishable by color. The color choice should consider accessibility and color blindness. The current color scheme provides differentiation, but given the large number of bars on the chart, we need to find a balance between differentiation and accessibility. We excluded overly bright or soft color schemes and choice schemePaired to deliver a visually engaging experience.
The Objective
We wanted to tell a simultaneously informative and fun story about recorded meteors that have hit the earth. To most people, a “meteor” probably sounds like a foreign and slightly sci-fi subject. We wanted to contextualize this within, first, the perspective of the world, before giving the viewer something special to think about: can one of these things actually land in my backyard when I host my next barbeque? If you live in Texas, perhaps you should invest in an overhang patio roof.
At the end of the day, Earth is simply a giant rock floating in ever-lasting nothingness with smaller rocks occasionally bumping into it on their journey through an infinite continuum. Hopefully, this information visualization brings a little perspective to our existence in this universe. Imagine the wonders we get to share it with!
In all seriousness, the visualization also gives us some sort of idea about government relations. Notice that not a single meteor ever hits Russia. Is that reasonable, or perhaps it just means the Russians aren’t sharing that with NASA. Makes sense in the context of the world. These are slightly surprising things that one may not consider when simply looking at visualizations in everyday life, but getting to build one and actively interact with the data allows you to analyze how data always sits in the context of culture.