Future Directions in Astronomy Visualisation

Abstract

Despite the large budgets spent annually on astronomical research equipment such as telescopes, instruments and supercomputers, the general trend is to analyse and view the resulting datasets using small, two-dimensional displays. We report here on alternative advanced image displays, with an emphasis on displays that we have constructed, including stereoscopic projection, multiple projector tiled displays and a digital dome. These displays can provide astronomers with new ways of exploring the terabyte and petabyte datasets that are now regularly being produced from all-sky surveys, high-resolution computer simulations, and Virtual Observatory projects. We also present a summary of the Advanced Image Displays for Astronomy (AIDA) survey which we conducted from March-May 2005, in order to raise some issues pertitent to the current and future level of use of advanced image displays.

13 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in PASA

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Incorporating interactive 3-dimensional graphics in astronomy research papers
• Scientific Visualization in Astronomy: Towards the Petascale Astronomy Era
• An Advanced, Three-Dimensional Plotting Library for Astronomy
• Immersive Virtual Reality Experiences for All-Sky Data
• Collaborative workspaces to accelerate discovery
• Stereo pairs in Astrophysics
• Visualization in Astrophysics: Developing New Methods, Discovering Our Universe, and Educating the Earth
• Virtual Realities: Is there only one advanced image display that astronomers need?
• Understanding the human in the design of cyber-human discovery systems for data-driven astronomy