The NASA Scientific Visualization Studio

This tour of the lunar landscape reveals the stark beauty of the Moon’s features and chronicles the events throughout cosmic history that created them. To do: Recreate this visualization with newer data and add a narration by Ernie and Noah Petro; decide whether this is a continuous video or whether cuts are allowed.

Science uncovers the inner workings of the universe that we can’t see for ourselves — phenomena that are measurable, but not visible. Sometimes the processes we seek to understand occur on microscopic scales, and other times they are so vast that, without a view from above, we remain oblivious to their true breadth. Complexities may hide in the distance or in an inconspicuous wavelength. Scientific visualization opens our eyes to the unseen, giving us an originative means of exploring that which in one way or another is invisible. Look for: Wavelengths that reveal detail, vantage points that provide clarity

The human eye is ill equipped to see all of the Sun’s complexity. By measuring and then visualizing these invisible intricacies, the true nature of the Sun as a magnetic star is made clear. To do: Extend the visualization at the beginning with a "true color" sun, an ultraviolet sun, and a magnetogram sun prior to showing the magnetic field lines. Add a narration from Tom and a solar scientist.

Ozone is an invisible part of the atmosphere, but the effects it has on human life can be seen everywhere. Visualizing how this gas behaves highlights cause and effect relationships that were also once invisible. To do: If the narration is not changed, add some visual elements that point out the features in the narration. e.g., indicate the stratospheric and tropospheric levels and point out the intrusion signature on the ground. Change the color bar to a more explanatory form.

Earth works on many timescales, from sub-seconds to millennia. A product of many short-term datasets stitched together, this visualization tells the story of life on Earth over the last two decades. To do: Add a narration by Alex and Gene Feldman. Decide on the specific visualization or visualization edit to be narrated.

Science often begins with a theory. Connecting a theory with real data, as in this visualization of the Red Planet, makes for a glorious display of the scientific method. To do: Decide whether to use the version narrated by Joy Ng or to have a more SVS-centric narration.

Playing with spatial scales can make it easier to recognize patterns. Here, the vertical scale is exaggerated by a factor of 400 to clarify how carbon dioxide moves through the atmosphere. To do: Probably nothing. We can use this version as is.

In satellite images, Saharan dust is easily seen traversing the Atlantic Ocean. Pairing them with numerical data sheds light on surprising effects that dust has on a continent an entire ocean away. To do: Decide whether Kel's narration needs to be modified, or whether a different visualization should be used here.

This animation captures phenomena observed over the course of nine days following the neutron star merger known as GW170817, detected on Aug. 17, 2017. They include gravitational waves (pale arcs), a near-light-speed jet that produced gamma rays (magenta), expanding debris from a kilonova that produced ultraviolet (violet), optical and infrared (blue-white to red) emission, and, once the jet directed toward us expanded into our view from Earth, X-rays (blue). Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/CI LabMusic: "Exploding Skies" from Killer TracksWatch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.Complete transcript available. || Neutron_Star_Merger_Still_2_new_1080.png (1920x1080) [2.5 MB] || Neutron_Star_Merger_Still_2_new_1080.jpg (1920x1080) [167.3 KB] || Neutron_Star_Merger_Still_2_new_print.jpg (1024x576) [50.4 KB] || Neutron_Star_Merger_Still_2_new.png (3840x2160) [7.7 MB] || Neutron_Star_Merger_Still_2_new.jpg (3840x2160) [1.0 MB] || Neutron_Star_Merger_Still_2_new_searchweb.png (320x180) [51.4 KB] || Neutron_Star_Merger_Still_2_new_thm.png (80x40) [4.4 KB] || 12740_NS_Merger_Update_1080.m4v (1920x1080) [50.3 MB] || 12740_NS_Merger_Update_H264_1080.mp4 (1920x1080) [96.9 MB] || 12740_NS_Merger_Update_1080p.mov (1920x1080) [101.9 MB] || NS_Merger_SRT_Captions.en_US.srt [417 bytes] || NS_Merger_SRT_Captions.en_US.vtt [399 bytes] || 12740_NS_Merger_4k_Update.webm (3840x2160) [10.0 MB] || 12740_NS_Merger_4k_Update_H264.mp4 (3840x2160) [254.9 MB] || 12740_NS_Merger_4k_Update_H264.mov (3840x2160) [516.7 MB] || 12740_NS_Merger_4k_Update_ProRes_3840x2160_5994.mov (3840x2160) [5.1 GB] ||

Bennu's Journey is a 6-minute animated movie about NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, asteroid Bennu, and the formation of our solar system. Born from the rubble of a violent collision, hurled through space for millions of years, asteroid Bennu has had a tough life in a rough neighborhood - the early solar system. Bennu's Journey shows what is known and what remains mysterious about the evolution of Bennu and the planets. By retrieving a sample of Bennu, OSIRIS-REx will teach us more about the raw ingredients of the solar system and our own origins.The animation was produced in an 8 x 3 aspect ratio at a resolution of 5760 x 2160 and is available in its full resolution, 4K Ultra HD, 1080HD and 720HD versions in both a letter boxed and a 16 x 9 cropped format. ||

To do: Chapter header paragraph to be added.

This visualization puts events large and small into the dynamic context of how the Earth is affected by the Sun, and brings many visualization principles to bear in the service of telling the story. To do: This visualization should be OK as is, unless we want to introduce the 360 version of Dynamic Earth in this Gallery.

In December of 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first people to leave our home planet and travel to another body in space. But as crew members Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders all later recalled, the most important thing they discovered was Earth.Using photo mosaics and elevation data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), this video commemorates the 45th anniversary of Apollo 8's historic flight by recreating the moment when the crew first saw and photographed the Earth rising from behind the Moon. Narrator Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon, sets the scene for a three-minute visualization of the view from both inside and outside the spacecraft accompanied by the onboard audio of the astronauts.The visualization draws on numerous historical sources, including the actual cloud pattern on Earth from the ESSA-7 satellite and dozens of photographs taken by Apollo 8, and it reveals new, historically significant information about the Earthrise photographs. It has not been widely known, for example, that the spacecraft was rolling when the photos were taken, and that it was this roll that brought the Earth into view. The visualization establishes the precise timing of the roll and, for the first time ever, identifies which window each photograph was taken from.The key to the new work is a set of vertical stereo photographs taken by a camera mounted in the Command Module's rendezvous window and pointing straight down onto the lunar surface. It automatically photographed the surface every 20 seconds. By registering each photograph to a model of the terrain based on LRO data, the orientation of the spacecraft can be precisely determined.Andrew Chaikin's article Who Took the Legendary Earthrise Photo From Apollo 8? appeared in the January, 2018 issue of Smithsonian magazine. It includes the story of the making of this visualization.A Google Hangout discussion of this visualization between Ernie Wright (creator of the visualization), Andrew Chaikin, John Keller (LRO project scientist), and Aries Keck (NASA media specialist) was held on December 20, 2013. A replay of that hangout is available here.Ernie Wright presented a talk about the making of this animation at the 2014 SIGGRAPH Conference in Vancouver. He also wrote a NASA Wavelength blog entry about Earthrise that includes links to educator resources related to LRO. ||