Jayanne English's Homepage

Follow-Up Material from Visualizaton at ATNF 2009

• Chris Fluke's Lecture powerpoint
• Chris Fluke's Workshop Lecture powerpoint

Visualizaton at ATNF 2009

Welcome to the site for the astronomy visualization workshops to be held between Wednesday Feb 4/09 and Thursday Feb 5/09 at the Australia Telescope National Facility. Each session will begin with 1 practical talk. We will then finish up with a workshop where you actually make an image (Feb 4) or 3-D plot (Feb 5). Please bring your laptop. It is best to work in 2s or 3s so if you don't mind, please invite people who don't have laptops to create with you during the workshop component. Below are items you will need for this component.

Wednesday Feb 4, 2009: Jayanne English (U. Manitoba)

Thursday Feb 5, 2009: Chris Fluke (Swinburne University of Technology)

• Wednesday Feb 4: Jayanne English (U. Manitoba)
  
  • From Cosmos to Canvas: Tensions between Art and Science in Astronomy Images.
    The International Year of Astronomy 2009 would like to promote content produced by astronomers - professional and amateurs. Bold colour images from telescopes act as extraordinary ambassadors for astronomers because they pique the public's curiosity. Unfortunately attempts by scientists to represent their discoveries can tend to all but drown out the conventions of visual literacy. This can dilute the impact of an image. This session is to help you render your astronomy images in the most effective manner possible. This workshop will help you to learn how to make outstanding, striking electronic images to support your science stories in accurate, compelling ways. Bring your laptop and learn techniques of the professionals. (Information about want you should load your laptop with will be available at http://www.physics.umanitoba.ca/~english/vizATNF/
    
    
  • Needed for the Workshop Component:
    • Black and White Fits Data or Black and White jpegs.
      

      If you have your own data, please bring totally processed black & white jpeg files. It would be helpful to have at least 3 different images that you wish to combine.

      If you do not have data of your own, please download all of the files in this directory onto your laptop. We will manipulate them into colour images using GIMP or PhotoShop during the workshop.

    • Needed for Creating Colour Images: GIMP
      If you do not have an image manipulation package on your computer e.g. PhotoShop), the Gnu Image Manipulation Package is free, easy to install, and works on Linux as well as Microsoft. (But yes you can use PhotoShop if you have it. You may like to try out an evaluation version from the adobe website.)
  NEWImages created during this workshop.
  
  
• Thursday Feb 5: Chris Fluke (Swinburne University of Technology)
  • (Almost) Everything you wanted to know about using S2PLOT to visualise astronomy datasets
    S2PLOT is an advanced three-dimensional plotting library with support for standard and enhanced display devices. Developed at the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, S2PLOT is steadily making its way into the astronomy community. With a PGPLOT-inspired interface, S2PLOT provides astronomers with elegant techniques for displaying and exploring 3-d data sets directly from their program code. I will demonstrate how to get started with S2PLOT and show off the wide range of functionality, including special features available in the forthcoming (open source) relase of version 2.4. Questions on how S2PLOT can help with your own research projects are strongly encouraged.
    
    
  • Needed for the Workshop Component:
    
    S2plot needs to be installed and configured on your laptop.
    
    • Instructions for MacBooks running Leopard.
    • Generic Instructions.
    
    Here are some s2plot programs that will be used at the workshop.
    • Gzipped Tar file of programs.