Labs
// Art and science studio // Est. 1999
Insanity
Labs
Mad science,
artfully executed.
Kinetic art, working instruments, and experiments that end up on the wall. Made in West Texas.
Analemma camera
Multi-camera time-lapse rigs
Acquiring…
Data: Launch Library 2 · The Space Devs · times in Central
A fresh batch looks like a string of pearls sliding across the sky. You can only see it when the satellites are still in sunlight and your sky is already dark: roughly the first hour or two after sunset, or before sunrise, in the first few days after a launch.
Tip: click a train on the globe, or a pass below, to see its path over you.
Computing…
Orbits: CelesTrak · Launches: The Space Devs · Passes computed in your browser for 31.46° N, 100.44° W · times in Central
The globe is replaying yesterday’s sky, sped up 480 times. Every streak is a real meteor caught by the Global Meteor Network’s cameras, drawn where it actually burned and at its real height. The heights are exaggerated so you can see them. White streaks are random meteors, gold ones belong to named showers, and green ones came within 500 miles of San Angelo. Meteors fall evenly all over the planet, so when you see a swarm, you’re looking at where the cameras are, mostly Belgium, the UK, Croatia, the US Southwest and New Zealand, during their pre-dawn hours, when the side of Earth they’re on is plowing forward into space debris.
Acquiring…
Data: Global Meteor Network (CC BY 4.0) · times in Central
Listening…
How to read this view
Each icon is a real aircraft broadcasting its own position, drawn in its own shape: airliner, wide-body, regional or business jet, turboprop, light plane, military jet or helicopter. Color shows altitude band (green low, then yellow, orange, pink, and blue up in the jet stream), the line under each one drops to its spot on the map, and the side view at the bottom lines everyone up by height. Data blocks read the way a controller’s scope does: callsign, then altitude in hundreds of feet with a climb (↑) or descent (↓) arrow and ground speed in knots. The line out front is where it will be in one minute. Airports follow sectional-chart colors (blue towered, magenta non-towered, double ring military), rings are in nautical miles, and the compass rose on San Angelo’s airport is magnetic. Click any aircraft for details.
NOT FOR NAVIGATION · community ADS-B data, delayed and incomplete
Data: airplanes.live community ADS-B receivers (adsb.lol as backup) via insanitylabs.com · refreshed every 10 s
Photograph the sun at the same clock time every day for a year and it draws a lopsided figure-8 in the sky. That’s the analemma, and it’s what the camera in the studio is being built to catch. The globe shows the same shape from the other side: each gold point marks where the sun was straight overhead at San Angelo’s noon on that day of the year. The tilt of Earth’s axis stretches it north and south; the oval orbit pinches it into an 8.
One figure-8 per hour, 10 AM to 3 PM Central Standard Time, one dot per day of the year · bright dot is today · fields assume a rectilinear lens across the full sensor
Computed live for 31.46° N, 100.44° W · times in Central