A Comparison of Popular Point Configurations on $\mathbb{S}^2$

There are many ways to generate a set of nodes on the sphere for use in a variety of problems in numerical analysis. We present a survey of quickly generated point sets on $\mathbb{S}^2$, examine their equidistribution properties, separation, covering, and mesh ratio constants and present a new point set, equal area icosahedral points, with low mesh ratio. We analyze numerically the leading order asymptotics for the Riesz and logarithmic potential energy for these configurations with total points $N<50,000$ and present some new conjectures.