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 × 6k × 16,384 channels, i.e. 620 giga-voxels or 2.5 TB. We are in the process of defining our 3D visualisation needs for WALLABY.
Relevant conferences
- 2014, July 7–11 IAU Symposium 309: “Galaxies in 3D across the Universe”, Vienna, Austria
- 2014, Mar 10–14 3D2014: Gas and stars in galaxies: A multi-wavelength 3D perspective, ESO, Garching near Munich, Germany
- 2013, Dec 9–13 Astroinformatics 2013: Knowledge From Data, ATNF, Sydney, Australia
- 2013, Dec 8–10 OzViz 2013, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Workshops
- 2010, Apr 28, 3D Visualisation workshop @ ATNF
- 2010, Apr 7, internal ATNF meeting re databases / catalogs
- 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 volume rendering of noisy multi-spectral astronomical data (by Amr Hassan)
- Challenges for Source finding in Radio Astronomy (by Tara Murphy)
- 3D Source Finding in Radio Astronomy (by Matthew Whiting)
- 2009, Feb 4/5 3D Visualisation Conference @ ATNF
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)
Visualisation Tools
- KARMA (interactive 2D viewing and analysis of 3D astronomical data cubes; 3D cube animations with XRAY)
- 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 by 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