Excerpt from "Dynamic Earth"
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- Visualizations by:
- Greg Shirah
- View full credits
A giant explosion of magnetic energy from the sun, called a coronal mass ejection, slams into and is deflected completely by the Earth's powerful magnetic field. The sun also continually sends out streams of light and radiation energy. Earth's atmosphere acts like a radiation shield, blocking quite a bit of this energy.
Much of the radiation energy that makes it through is reflected back into space by clouds, ice and snow and the energy that remains helps to drive the Earth system, powering a remarkable planetary engine — the climate. It becomes the energy that feeds swirling wind and ocean currents as cold air and surface waters move toward the equator and warm air and water moves toward the poles — all in an attempt to equalize temperatures around the world.
A jury appointed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Science magazine has selected "Excerpt from Dynamic Earth" as the winner of the 2013 NSF International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge for the Video category. This animation will be highlighted in the February 2014 special section of Science and will be hosted on ScienceMag.org and NSF.gov
This animation was selected for the Computer Animation Festival's Electronic Theater at the Association for Computer Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH), a prestigious computer graphics and technical research forum. This is an excerpt from the fulldome, high-resolution show 'Dynamic Earth: Exploring Earth's Climate Engine.' The Dynamic Earth dome show was selected as a finalist in the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival Science Media Awards under the category "Best Immersive Cinema - Fulldome".
Follow a coronal mass ejection as is passes Venus then Earth, and explore how the sun drives Earth's winds and oceans.
For complete transcript, click here.
Also available for the entire Dynamic Earth show are the transcript and the educator's guide.
Follow a coronal mass ejection as is passes Venus then Earth; and explore how the sun drive Earth's winds and oceans. This version has an alternate narrator.
For complete transcript, click here.
For More Information
Computer Graphics Corona Coronal Mass Ejections Coronal Properties Earth Science Earth's Solar Shield HDTV Heliophysics Hyperwall Magnetosphere Narrated ocean circulation ocean currents Ocean Floor Ocean Heat Transfer Ocean Waves Oceans Physical geography Physical oceanography SDO Sea Surface Topography Solar Activity Solar Dynamics Observatory Solar Flares Solar Phenomenon Solar Ultraviolet Solar Wind Space Weather Sun-earth Interactions
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
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Animators
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
- Cindy Starr (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
- Ernie Wright (USRA)
- Horace Mitchell (NASA/GSFC)
- Lori Perkins (NASA/GSFC)
- Tom Bridgman (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
- Trent L. Schindler (USRA)
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Writer
- Thomas Lucas (Thomas Lucas Productions)
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Video editor
- Stuart A. Snodgrass (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
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Producers
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC)
- Horace Mitchell (NASA/GSFC)
- Thomas Lucas (Thomas Lucas Productions)
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Narrators
- Liam Neeson (Self)
- Michael Starobin (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Tapes
This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes:-
Dynamic Earth
(ID: 2012069)
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 4:00AM
Produced by - Werner Benger
Datasets used in this visualization
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Terra and Aqua BMNG (Blue Marble: Next Generation)
ID: 508Credit: The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).
This dataset can be found at: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/
See all pages that use this dataset -
Hipparcos Tycho Catalogue (Tycho 2 Catalogue)
ID: 550This dataset can be found at: http://archive.eso.org/ASTROM/
See all pages that use this dataset -
Magnetic Field Lines (Luhmann-Friesen)
ID: 615Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 84, Aug. 1, 1979, p. 4405-4408
This dataset can be found at: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1979JGR....84.4405L
See all pages that use this dataset -
MERRA
ID: 684 -
Enlil Heliospheric Model (Enlil Heliospheric Model)
ID: 685MHD solar wind simulation
See all pages that use this dataset -
BATS-R-US Magnetosphere Model
ID: 686MHD Magnetospheric simulation
See all pages that use this dataset -
ECCO2 (ECCO2 High Resolution Ocean and Sea Ice Model)
ID: 707
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.