Project: Visualizing the Orion Constellation

laradawn · April 5, 2022, 10:33am

Hi! So I just completed the project Visualizing the Orion Constellation on the Data Scientist path and as per instructions I’m sharing what I coded for it here

#1

%matplotlib notebook
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D

#2

# Orion
x = [-0.41, 0.57, 0.07, 0.00, -0.29, -0.32,-0.50,-0.23, -0.23]
y = [4.12, 7.71, 2.36, 9.10, 13.35, 8.13, 7.19, 13.25,13.43]
z = [2.06, 0.84, 1.56, 2.07, 2.36, 1.72, 0.66, 1.25,1.38]

#3

fig2d = plt.figure()
ax = plt.subplot(1,1,1)
plt.scatter(x,y, marker = '*')
plt.xlabel('Orion X Coordinates')
plt.ylabel('Orion Y Coordinates')
plt.title('Orion: 2D Visualization')
plt.show()

#4

fig_3d = plt.figure()
constellation3d = plt.subplot(1,1,1,projection='3d')
constellation3d.scatter(x,y,z,marker='*',s=50)
plt.title('Orion: 3D Visulalisation')
constellation3d.set_xlabel('Orion x Coordinates')
constellation3d.set_ylabel('Orion y Coordinates')
constellation3d.set_zlabel('Orion z Coordinates')
plt.show()

It was quite fun, any feedback totes appreciated

lisalisaj · April 5, 2022, 12:50pm

Congrats on completing the project!

It would be easier to see the output of your code if you shared a link to your Jupyter (or Colab) Notebook from your GitHub repo.

laradawn · April 5, 2022, 12:57pm

Ah, great tip Thank you!

github.com

laradawn/Codecademy_Projects/blob/main/constellation-checkpoint.ipynb

{
 "cells": [
  {
   "cell_type": "markdown",
   "metadata": {},
   "source": [
    "## Project: Visualizing the Orion Constellation\n",
    "\n",
    "In this project you are Dr. Jillian Bellovary, a real-life astronomer for the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. As an astronomer, part of your job is to study the stars. You've recently become interested in the constellation Orion, a collection of stars that appear in our night sky and form the shape of [Orion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation)), a warrior God from ancient Greek mythology. \n",
    "\n",
    "As a researcher on the Hayden Planetarium team, you are in charge of visualizing the Orion constellation in 3D using the Matplotlib function `.scatter()`. To learn more about the `.scatter()` you can see the Matplotlib documentation [here](https://matplotlib.org/api/_as_gen/matplotlib.pyplot.scatter.html). \n",
    "\n",
    "You will create a rotate-able visualization of the position of the Orion's stars and get a better sense of their actual positions. To achieve this, you will be mapping real data from outer space that maps the position of the stars in the sky\n",
    "\n",
    "The goal of the project is to understand spatial perspective. Once you visualize Orion in both 2D and 3D, you will be able to see the difference in the constellation shape humans see from earth versus the actual position of the stars that make up this constellation. \n",
    "\n",
    "<img src=\"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Orion_constellation_with_star_labels.jpg\" alt=\"Orion\" style=\"width: 400px;\"/>\n",
    "\n"
   ]
  },

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lisalisaj · April 5, 2022, 1:37pm

A few minor style things—that you don’t HAVE to do. Just ideas…

if you wanted to change the background color of the 2-d plot:
ax.set_facecolor('color goes here, black, navy, etc')

For 3-d:
ax3D.set_facecolor('color goes here')

you could use the color parameter to change the marker color:
plt.scatter(x,y, color = 'gold', marker = '*', s=70)
to remove the grid from the 3d plot:
ax3D.grid(False)
to remove the panes:
x3D.w_xaxis.set_pane_color((0, 0, 0, 1.0)) ax3D.w_yaxis.set_pane_color((0, 0, 0, 1.0)) ax3D.w_zaxis.set_pane_color((0, 0, 0, 1.0))

More info here.

Good work!