NEO Analysis Project

This project analyses Near-Earth Object (NEO) close-approach data to identify trends, visualise distance metrics, and explore velocity relationships. The analysis includes data cleaning, processing, and visualisation using static and interactive plots.

Project Overview

This repository contains scripts for:

• Data Cleaning: Processing and standardising date and distance information.
• Data Analysis: Calculating percentage changes in distance and summarising statistics.
• Data Visualisation: Creating static and interactive plots to visualise NEO data.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Usage
• Data
• Visualisations
• Licence

Installation

To set up this project, ensure you have Python 3.7 or higher installed, and install the necessary dependencies:

pip install pandas matplotlib seaborn plotly

Usage

1. Clone the Repository

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/neo_analysis.git
   cd neo_analysis

2. Prepare Your Data

   Ensure you have a CSV file named neo_data.csv in the project directory with the required columns.

3. Run the Analysis

   Execute the script to perform data cleaning, analysis, and visualisation:

   python neo_analysis.py

   The script will:

   • Clean and parse the date information.
   • Calculate percentage changes in distance.
   • Save a summary of results to neo_summary.csv.
   • Generate visualisations as both static and interactive plots.

Data

The input data should be a CSV file named neo_data.csv with the following columns:

• Close-Approach (CA) Date: Date and time of the close approach.
• CA DistanceMinimum (au): Minimum distance of the close approach (in astronomical units).
• V relative(km/s): Relative velocity (if available).
• V infinity(km/s): Velocity at infinity (if available).

Visualisations

The script generates the following visualisations:

• Static Plots:

  • Line plot of minimum distance of close approaches over time.
  • Histogram of minimum distances.
  • Scatter plot of relative velocity vs. velocity at infinity.

• Interactive Plots (using Plotly):

  • Line plot of minimum distance of close approaches over time.
  • Histogram of minimum distances (if added).
  • Scatter plot of relative velocity vs. velocity at infinity (if added).

Licence

This project is licensed under the MIT Licence. Please take a look at the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgements

• Thanks to the contributors and open-source libraries used in this project.

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