Dr Chris Fluke (Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne)

Future Directions in Astronomy Visualization - Dr Chris Fluke Colloquium

Schottky Room

Abstract

Every year, astronomers spend millions of dollars on telescopes,
instruments and computers, yet they tend to look at the resulting data on small, flat, two-dimensional displays. Limiting factors seem to be the level of awareness of techniques that are available, and lack of access to appropriate software tools to simplify the visualization process. I aim to address both of these issues.

I will present a summary of Swinburne's work on advanced image displays
including stereoscopic projection and MirrorDome (full-dome digital projection on a budget). I will also demonstrate S2Plot: a new, 3-dimensional plotting library with support for both standard and advanced display devices. With a PGPlot-inspired interface, S2Plot provides astronomers with elegant techniques for displaying and exploring 3d data sets directly from their program code.