Starship Asterisk*

APOD Heatmap

Explanation: The first APOD appeared 19 years ago today. To help celebrate, APOD brings you today an all-sky heatmap of (nearly) 19 years of APOD entries. The brighter a region appears on the above heatmap, the more APODs that occur in that region. Clicking anywhere on the map will bring up a link to all APODs, if any, that appear nearby. We at APOD again thank our readers, NASA, astrophotographers, volunteers who translate APOD daily into over 20 languages, volunteers who run APOD's over 20 mirror sites, volunteers who answer questions and administer APOD's main discussion board, and volunteers who run and update APOD's social media sites and smartphone applications for their continued support.

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No, really, the pleasure is all ours. Thank you, Bob and Jerry, for 19 years of astronomy, science, and all-around brain food.

Happy Birthday

How about an APOD of the dullest region of the sky, as measured by lack of any previous APOD?

What does the red wavy line signify? And the yellow half-circle at the 'crest' of the wave? Are the thin light blue lines depicting the Milky Way?

This is an awesome map! And thanks for a super-awesome 19 years!
Here's to the next 19!!!!

Too much heat. My computer exploded!

Congratulations APOD!!! Great milestone achieved. I have learned probably 95% of what I know of Astronomy from this website. I was really happy when my 8 year old son said yesterday "Dad, Id like to learn more about astronomy!!" Perhaps a future Gallileo

Happy Birthday APOD and thank you to all who make it happen.

Today's heat map doesn't work.

I'll take people's word for it that this is an interesting APOD. I can't really get to it. Bits and pieces from time to time, but mostly just server timeouts from the Italian source site.

How about following the usual APOD approach of the main page image being a static image hosted here, and the click through linking to the source? Seems like people simply loading the APOD home page is badly overloading the source server, which is apparently generating the image from code, not supplying a cached image.

Chris Peterson wrote:I'll take people's word for it that this is an interesting APOD. I can't really get to it. Bits and pieces from time to time, but mostly just server timeouts from the Italian source site.

How about following the usual APOD approach of the main page image being a static image hosted here, and the click through linking to the source? Seems like people simply loading the APOD home page is badly overloading the source server, which is apparently generating the image from code, not supplying a cached image.

Well, it was working pretty good last night before it started getting overloaded today. It is a partially vector image is generated using javascript, CSS, and HTML and the image itself is dynamic and changes not only when new APODs are but also the sky itself is changing like a little planetarium simulation. This is cool but yeah, for high stress situations a static version would be nice. It's also entirely possible that the cone search itself is what is overloading the server rather than the image generation. Seems unlikely but I guess nearly any code has room for improvement.

All I can say is you APOD guys ROCK.
Seriously.

Chris Peterson wrote:I'll take people's word for it that this is an interesting APOD. I can't really get to it. Bits and pieces from time to time, but mostly just server timeouts from the Italian source site.

How about following the usual APOD approach of the main page image being a static image hosted here, and the click through linking to the source? Seems like people simply loading the APOD home page is badly overloading the source server, which is apparently generating the image from code, not supplying a cached image.

geckzilla wrote:Well, it was working pretty good last night before it started getting overloaded today. It is a partially vector image is generated using javascript, CSS, and HTML and the image itself is dynamic and changes not only when new APODs are but also the sky itself is changing like a little planetarium simulation. This is cool but yeah, for high stress situations a static version would be nice. It's also entirely possible that the cone search itself is what is overloading the server rather than the image generation. Seems unlikely but I guess nearly any code has room for improvement.

FWIW, I finally used Chrome to be able to view it, and even then it was slow.
Now, I've just been getting the 'timed out' notification.

Happy Birthday, APOD and many thinks to all. I check it out every day.

Unfortunately, when I click on a spot that is bright red, such as the area I presume to be Sagitarius just to the left of center on the "wavy line," all I get is:

Sorry. We didn't find any APODs matching RA=NaN, DEC=NaN (radius 3°)

I'm using Internet Explorer 8, all the latest updates, in WinXP.

Guest wrote:Happy Birthday, APOD and many thinks to all. I check it out every day.

Unfortunately, when I click on a spot that is bright red, such as the area I presume to be Sagitarius just to the left of center on the "wavy line," all I get is:

Sorry. We didn't find any APODs matching RA=NaN, DEC=NaN (radius 3°)

I'm using Internet Explorer 8, all the latest updates, in WinXP.

All of the latest updates in WinXP and on IE8 is still five years out of date. The javascript probably wasn't written to compensate for IE8's shortcomings.

geckzilla wrote:All of the latest updates in WinXP and on IE8 is still five years out of date. The javascript probably wasn't written to compensate for IE8's shortcomings.

Yeah, I stopped testing my websites against IE8 a while back. There's no reason anybody should be using that browser. Even if you're still using XP, there are Chrome and Firefox, which are largely standards compliant and can be kept current even under the old OS.

HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
THANK YOU for the wonderful pix!!

Thank you.

You should do a heatmap of where APoD is accessed globally

Congratulations APOD!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!

This is an interesting way to get around the sky.

Thanks.

:---[===] *

Happy Birthday and thanks to everyone working to provide excellent science to the world daily! I appreciate also the personal response I got from a professor when I wrote him. APOD is my home page; if I miss a day, you provide the Archive. I didn't know about this forum and am very glad to have found it. Thank you for that, too.

start filling in those blank spots!

Guest wrote:I'm using Internet Explorer 8, all the latest updates, in WinXP.

Then you're a sitting duck for any new security holes that open up (and they will). Microsoft has stopped issuing security updates for WinXP, which was the already the least secure operating system to begin with.

Internet Explorer is up to version 11, last I checked, which was a while ago.

Indigo_Sunrise wrote:What does the red wavy line signify? And the yellow half-circle at the 'crest' of the wave? Are the thin light blue lines depicting the Milky Way?

I'm sure the wavy red line is the ecliptic. I don't see any yellow half circle or thin blue lines. The Milky Way can be discerned as a sort of wide, rounded V-shape of a higher density of stars. Squinting helps.

Happy Birthday! I thought for sure that Orion would have the most, but Andromeda has more. There could be others; I just clicked on what appeared the brightest.