Theme: Data visualisation from line plots to augmented & virtual reality
Interactive Figures in the AAS Journals
Electronic publishing opens the possibility of conveying scientific content using visualizations that are interactive and exploratory, not just static images. The American Astronomical Society, publisher of the Astrophysical Journal and others, has been working to promote the use of "interactive figures" in its journals as part of a broader effort to keep its offerings on the technical forefront. This year, the AAS is launching new tools to ease the creation of interactive figures for two common data types: time series, using a new AAS Lightcurve Tool, and sky images, using the AAS WorldWide Telescope. This poster will give an overview of these tools and how you can start using them to share your data in a new, rich way. Since the poster itself will be static, ask the presenter to see an interactive demonstration!
Tutorial Abstract
Tutorial (T3) Peter Williams (CfA and AAS)
Interactively exploring and visualizing data on the sky with Jupyter and pywwt
Sometimes, astronomers view image data with very specific goals in mind, but often, they are interested in open-ended exploration and discovery, hoping to gain new insight by comparing against multiwavelength survey data or preexisting source catalogs. Participants in this tutorial will learn how to use a powerful tool that enables this discovery from the comfort of a Jupyter notebook: pywwt, a module that allows researchers to embed the sophisticated AAS WorldWide Telescope (WWT) visualization engine in Python applications and Jupyter notebooks. The WWT engine allows scientific data to be intermingled with an interactive, 4D model of the known universe seeded with survey data from lunar surface maps to all-sky surveys across the EM spectrum. The “ds9-like” experience provided by pywwt can be controlled through code as well as manually, and the engine that it controls can be embedded anywhere that a Web browser can run since it is built on HTML, JavaScript, and WebGL. Hands-on activities will stitch the pywwt module together with other elements of the modern Python ecosystem for working with astronomical data such as astroquery. Bring your sky images or source catalogs!
