3D Visualisation for Astronomy
Here we look at a range of 3D visualisation tools suitable for analysing large astronomical data cubes (which are typically in FITS format). WALLABY data cubes obtained from a single ASKAP pointing will be large, about 6k x 6k x 16,384 channels, i.e. 620 Giga voxels or 2.5 TByte.
Conferences:
- 2013, Dec 8-10 OzViz 2013, Monash University, Melbourne
- 2013, Dec 9-13 Astroinformatics 2013: Knowledge From Data, ATNF, Sydney
- 2014, Mar 10-14 3D2014: Gas and stars in galaxies: A multi-wavelength 3D perspective, ESO, Garching near Munich, Germany
- 2014, July 7-11 IAU Symposium 309: Galaxies in 3D across the Universe", Vienna, Austria
Workshops:
- 2009, Feb 4/5 3D Visualisation Conf. @ ATNF
- 2009, Dec 14-16 AstroMed09 @ Sydney Uni; selected talks:
- Critical Review of Scientific Visualisation in Astronomy (by Chris Fluke)
- Visualisation-directed interactive model-fitting to spectral data cubes (by Chris Fluke)
- GPU-based volumne rendering of noisy multi-spectral astronopmical data (by Amr Hassan)
- Challenges for Source finding in Radio Astronomy (by Tara Murphy)
- 3D Source Finding in Radio Astronomy (by Matthew Whiting)
- 2010, Apr 7, internal ATNF meeting re databases / catalogs - my notes
- 2010, Apr 28, 3D Visualisation workshop @ ATNF
- 2010, May 16?, internal ATNF workshop
- ...
Swinburne Visualisation Research
- Key people in the WALLABY team: David Barnes, Chris Fluke, and Amr Hassan
- S2PLOT
- Real-time, interactive GPU based volume rendering (e.g. HIPASS in 3D)
PhD student Amr Hassan demonstrates an 8000 x 8000 pixel volume rendering of a full southern sky HIPASS cube on the CSIRO OptiPortal during the 3D Visualisation Workshop @ ATNF. The giant cube was made by Russell Jurek (ATNF) from the existing set of 387 original southern HIPASS cubes.
Visualisation Tools
- KARMA (interactive 2D viewing and analysis of 3D astronomical data cubes; 3D cube animations with XRAY; limited to cubes sizes less than ??)
- CASA Viewer in casapy (interactive 2D viewing and analysis of 3D cubes)
- AstroMD
- VisIVO
(interactive 3D viewing and analysis of large data tables)
- FITS and HDF5 data formats will be included in future
- described in "VisIVO - Integrated Tools and Services for Large-Scale Astrophysical Visualization"
- Aladin
- TopCat
- Drishti
- VisIt
- Harvard AstroMed 3D Slicer and 3D Slicer
- WASP - Paul Bourke
- CSIRO's eResearch (Advanced Scientific Computing, Data Management Services, Visualisation, Software Development Tools, etc.)
- Longhorn Vis Portal"
Ideas / Links
- 3D ALIVE - Monash's Interactive 3D Visualisation Facility
- CSIRO OptiPortal
- Related: Wiki Sky, Google Sky, Zoomable Spitzer images