Douglas Adams once said, “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.” We’re discovering new spacey things all the time as seen in this fantastic visualization that captures in time-lapse the asteroid discoveries over the past 30 years. It starts off with slow with less than 10000 discoveries in the early 80s but more waves become visible with technological advances in the decades that follow.
As asteroids are discovered, they are highlighted white and change colour depending on whether their orbit crosses that of Earth (called “earth crossers” and shown in red) or approaches Earth (shown in yellow). All other asteroids are highlighted in green.
See Asteroid Discovery From 1980 – 2010 below.
[via Buzzfeed]
