I had a lot of fun getting familiar with the Skyfield API and making a list of the cities that I’ve visited to see which one is closer to the center of the earth. It turns out that London is the winner, at 6365.10 km to Earth’s core with Vancouver, B.C. in close second. Sure, someone can tell you that the earth is slightly thicker at the equator due to the planet’s rotation, but adding some data, crunching the numbers and visualizing it can make the concept come to life!
This project was also a great opportunity to dive into Folium. Here are some highlights of what I worked on:
- Customizing markers: Added different icons and colors to the city markers.
- Creating a legend: Designed a custom HTML legend for better context.
- Changing the map tile: Experimented with different base map styles to fit the project’s theme.
Watching the map come together was a rewarding and exciting process, but I still have plenty of ideas to explore.
What’s Next?
Here are a few things I’d like to improve or build on:
- Expanding the marker color palette: Folium’s default colors are somewhat limited, and I’d love to create a more vibrant, custom set of colors to make the data pop.
- Making the map more interactive: Adding functionality like user input or clickable data points could make the project more engaging.
- Simplifying the code: Potentially restructuring the code with classes for cities might make adding new locations easier and improve flexibility for future updates.
This project was a fun and valuable learning experience, combining Python, mapping, and data visualization.
If you’re curious, you can check out the Jupyter Notebook and all the code behind this project on GitHub here.