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Asteroid Alert
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Description:
This application simulates the solar system dynamics using the information provided by the NASA NEO Program. Near Earth objects and objects close to other planets will be reported in real time through notification messages. The advanced graphical interface allows you to monitor the orbits of celestial bodies as a function of the elapsed time. X rays and protons emitted by Sun are also notified to have a complete view of the dangers from space.
Features
· User friendly graphical interface
· Notification of near-Earth objects
· Notification of objects close to other planets
· New! Space weather notifications (X rays and protons)
· Detailed information of each event (Size, Velocity, Distance)
· Customizable filters
· NEO database updated every day
· Sound notifications
For practical reasons
· The maximum resolution is achieved for asteroids that are less than 0.1 AU from the planets. The application photographs the situation on the current date and simulates events that will occur in the future or have occurred in the past.
· The number of asteroids plotted in the asteroid belt is only a fraction of the real number.
· The asteroids not yet included in the NASA NEO database may not be notified.
Space is our next frontier. Credits to all scientific projects!
Privacy Policy
These are our official statements regarding privacy in the use of our application (Asteroid alert) and this website (www.phonescience.eu).
'Asteroid Alert' requires the network permission to acquire the information about the events around the solar system. The scientific information are updated periodically, so this application requires an active internet connection. For user convenience, statistics indicate that the program requires less than 0.1 Mbytes of data per day from our supporting server.
Google Checkout's privacy policy is available at checkout.google.com/files/privacy.html. This website uses Google Analytics to gather traffic information and demographics. This may include storing cookies with your web browser. The Google Analytics privacy policy is available at www.google.com/intl/en/analytics/privacyoverview.html.
This policy was lasted modified June 15th, 2015.
Please contact us for any further information.
Manual
This manual describes the functionalities, meaning and limitations of this application. Although, graphics and data output were simplified to improve the user experiences, many functions were implemented to make this program more useful. The manual describes these functions and the associated graphic controls.
Basics controls
(1)
This manual.
(2)
It selects the planet view or the overview of the solar system. An example of overview is displayed here. Venus, Mars, Earth and the near Earth asteroid 2004 DF2 and its red orbit are displayed in the above figure. The green dots represent the closest asteroids that form a cloud around each planet.
(3)
These 4 buttons allow to see what happened in the past and what will happen in the future in the solar system. These controls are very similar to that ones you can see when you play a song. The back button, adjusts the simulated time to the current one, while the stop button stops the time running.
(4)
This is a button to select the time rate. Clicking on this button you will select one of these time rates: 5min, 15 mins, 30 mins, 2 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, 7 days. The time rate increases for each click progressively.
(5)
News about scientific discovers or facts. Clicking on this button you will access to the information regarding facts, curiosity, scientific discovers and info for incoming asteroids.
(6)
Setting area. Clicking on this button you can adjust some thresholds that impacts on the frequency of event notifications. This button appears and disappears when you touch the screen.
a)
The Check boxes allow to include (green fill) or esclude (white fill) 3 different notification events: the distance of asteroids from planets, asteroid size and solar wind activity.
(b)
Consequently, 3 thresholds can be adjusted. The asteroid distance threshold that is measured in astronomical units (is a unit of length, roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun; about 150,000,000 Km). The asteroid size threshold and the solar wind threshold that expresses how many standard deviations the measured value is away from the average value. Mainly, the last one regards both X rays and protons emissions.
c)
As you prefer, you can set the sound notifications and / or esclude the sound associated to each event.
(7)
X axis rotation. This bar appears and disappears when you touch the screen. It represents the X axis rotation of the 3D view. If you set this bar in the middle the orbital planes are shown in a lateral view.
(8)
this button appears and disappears when you touch the screen. Click on this button, if you want to load the updated information. The application do this operation every 3 hours automatically.
(9)
The red orbit represents the closest asteroid to the Earth. Its name is reported near the planet who intersects the orbit. On the top of the screen some useful information about the same object are reported.
(10)
Asteroid information. By default, the application selects the closest asteroid to the planet and target a green point (asteroid) with a red crosshair. You can select other asteroids just clicking on their position. This action identifies a new target. Click on the planet button (in this case the Earth) to target the closest one at the current time GMT.
(11)
These buttons select 3 different display modality: asteroids, X rays emitted from Sun (Solar flares activity) and protons emitted by Sun. All these activities are monitored by the program and notified when the values overcome the thresholds; see point (6).
(12)
Zoom function. This button, executes a zoom in of the planet and its satellites. If an asteroid is very close to the Earth this function can be very useful. The size of the orbital objects are proportional to real values. To return at the normal view click this button again.
(13)
Date and time as reference for the simulation.
(14)
Solar wind. In the figure are reported the X ray emissions that occurred in a few days. The measured intensity are referred to a specific date and time in the past. Consequently, the entire representation must not be intended as the global solar activity around the solar system in a particular time. If the emissions are significant, the colored area changes its color to indicate an intensity variation with respect to the normal activity. The bar on the bottom indicates the color and the associated values expressed in standard deviations from the average value. White and yellow are referred to normal activity, while the colors orange and red are referred to significant events. X rays are useful to measure the solar flare activity; click
here
to know more about the Space weather.
(15)
The same as (14) but expressed with a graph that follow the orbit of the Earth.
(16)
The position of the Earth at a particular time in the past indicated in the bottom of the screen.