Pixel-based overlays for navigating a galaxy of observations
Timothy Luciani, Rebecca Hachey, Daniel Q. Oliphant, Brian Cherinka, G. Elisabeta Marai · 2011
These preliminary results show that pixel-based overlays have the potential to generate scalable, graphical representations of astronomy data. This approach may allow us to overcome bandwidth and screen-space current limitations in astronomy database visualization by following a WebGL - PHP client-server architecture. The advantages of this approach are its versatility and visual scalability (to the pixel level), enabling the visual analysis of large datasets. The resulting versatility allows for flexible control over the visualization and the client-side scripts. Accessing graphics hardware through WebGL further provides the users with a rich, graphics-accelerated web experience. Preliminary feedback from astronomy researchers emphasizes the benefits of visual analysis to this field.