Rhys Taylor — Page 2

arXiv2015

FRELLED : A Realtime Volumetric Data Viewer For Astronomers

I present a new FITS viewer designed to explore 3D spectral line data (in particular HI) and assist with visual source extraction and analysis. Using the artistic software Blender, FRELLED can visualise even large (~600^3 voxels) data sets at high frame rates (10 f.p.s.) in 3D. Blender's interface enables easy navigation within the 3D environment, and the FRELLED scripts support world coordinate systems. A variety of tools are included to aid source extraction and analysis, including interactively masking data (using 3D polyhedra of arbitrary complexity), querying NED, calculating the flux in specified volumes, generating contour plots and overlaying optical data. It includes tools to overlay n-body particle data, and multi-volume rendering is supported. The interface is designed to make cataloguing sources as easy as possible and I show that this can be as much as a factor of 50 times faster than using other viewers.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2015

Comment on 'The role of 3-D interactive visualization in blind surveys of HI in galaxies'

Punzo et al. (2015) recently reported on the state of the art for visualisation of H I data cubes. I here briefly describe another program, FRELLED, specifically designed for dealing with H I data. Unlike many 3D viewers, FRELLED can handle astronomical world coordinates, easily and interactively mask and label specific volumes within the data, overlay optical data from the SDSS, generate contour plots and renzograms, make basic spectral profile measurements via an interface with MIRIAD, and can switch between viewing the data in 3D and 2D. The code is open source and can potentially be extended to include any astronomical function possible with Python, displaying the result in an interactive 3D environment.

astro-ph.GA↗