The Application of the Montage Image Mosaic Engine To The Visualization Of Astronomical Images

The Montage Image Mosaic Engine was designed as a scalable toolkit, written in C for performance and portability across *nix platforms, that assembles FITS images into mosaics. The code is freely available and has been widely used in the astronomy and IT communities for research, product generation and for developing next-generation cyber-infrastructure. Recently, it has begun to finding applicability in the field of visualization. This has come about because the toolkit design allows easy integration into scalable systems that process data for subsequent visualization in a browser or client. And it includes a visualization tool suitable for automation and for integration into Python: mViewer creates, with a single command, complex multi-color images overlaid with coordinate displays, labels, and observation footprints, and includes an adaptive image histogram equalization method that preserves the structure of a stretched image over its dynamic range. The Montage toolkit contains functionality originally developed to support the creation and management of mosaics but which also offers value to visualization: a background rectification algorithm that reveals the faint structure in an image; and tools for creating cutout and down-sampled versions of large images. Version 5 of Montage offers support for visualizing data written in HEALPix sky-tessellation scheme, and functionality for processing and organizing images to comply with the TOAST sky-tessellation scheme required for consumption by the World Wide Telescope (WWT). Four online tutorials enable readers to reproduce and extend all the visualizations presented in this paper.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures; accepted for publication in the PASP Special Focus Issue: Techniques and Methods for Astrophysical Data Visualizatio

CoBe -- Coded Beacons for Localization, Object Tracking, and SLAM Augmentation

This paper presents a novel beacon light coding protocol, which enables fast and accurate identification of the beacons in an image. The protocol is provably robust to a predefined set of detection and decoding errors, and does not require any synchronization between the beacons themselves and the optical sensor. A detailed guide is then given for developing an optical tracking and localization system, which is based on the suggested protocol and readily available hardware. Such a system operates either as a standalone system for recovering the six degrees of freedom of fast moving objects, or integrated with existing SLAM pipelines providing them with error-free and easily identifiable landmarks. Based on this guide, we implemented a low-cost positional tracking system which can run in real-time on an IoT board. We evaluate our system's accuracy and compare it to other popular methods which utilize the same optical hardware, in experiments where the ground truth is known. A companion video containing multiple real-world experiments demonstrates the accuracy, speed, and applicability of the proposed system in a wide range of environments and real-world tasks. Open source code is provided to encourage further development of low-cost localization systems integrating the suggested technology at its navigation core

A multi-projector CAVE system with commodity hardware and gesture-based interaction

Spatially-immersive systems such as CAVEs provide users with surrounding worlds by projecting 3D models on multiple screens around the viewer. Compared to alternative immersive systems such as HMDs, CAVE systems are a powerful tool for collaborative inspection of virtual environments due to better use of peripheral vision, less sensitivity to tracking errors, and higher communication possibilities among users. Unfortunately, traditional CAVE setups require sophisticated equipment including stereo-ready projectors and tracking systems with high acquisition and maintenance costs. In this paper we present the design and construction of a passive-stereo, four-wall CAVE system based on commodity hardware. Our system works with any mix of a wide range of projector models that can be replaced independently at any time, and achieves high resolution and brightness at a minimum cost. The key ingredients of our CAVE are a self-calibration approach that guarantees continuity across the screen, as well as a gesture-based interaction approach based on a clever combination of skeletal data from multiple Kinect sensors.Preprin

A Correction to the Standard Galactic Reddening Map: Passive Galaxies as Standard Crayons

We present corrections to the Schlegel, Finkbeiner, Davis (SFD98) reddening maps over the Sloan Digital Sky Survey northern Galactic cap area. To find these corrections, we employ what we dub the "standard crayon" method, in which we use passively evolving galaxies as color standards by which to measure deviations from the reddening map. We select these passively evolving galaxies spectroscopically, using limits on the H alpha and O II equivalent widths to remove all star-forming galaxies from the SDSS main galaxy catalog. We find that by correcting for known reddening, redshift, color-magnitude relation, and variation of color with environmental density, we can reduce the scatter in color to below 3% in the bulk of the 151,637 galaxies we select. Using these galaxies we construct maps of the deviation from the SFD98 reddening map at 4.5 degree resolution, with 1-sigma error of ~ 1.5 millimagnitudes E(B-V). We find that the SFD98 maps are largely accurate with most of the map having deviations below 3 millimagnitudes E(B-V), though some regions do deviate from SFD98 by as much as 50%. The maximum deviation found is 45 millimagnitudes in E(B-V), and spatial structure of the deviation is strongly correlated with the observed dust temperature, such that SFD98 underpredicts reddening in regions of low dust temperature. Our maps of these deviations, as well as their errors, are made available to the scientific community as supplemental correction to SFD98 at http://www.peekandgraves2010.com.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. Accepted to the ApJ. Reddening correction maps and associated software can be found at http://www.peekandgraves2010.co

Calibration of the Mid-Infrared Tully-Fisher Relation

Distance measures on a coherent scale around the sky are required to address the outstanding cosmological problems of the Hubble Constant and of departures from the mean cosmic flow. The correlation between galaxy luminosities and rotation rates can be used to determine distances to many thousands of galaxies in a wide range of environments potentially out to 200 Mpc. Mid-infrared (3.6 microns) photometry with the Spitzer Space Telescope is particularly valuable as the source of the luminosities because it provides products of uniform quality across the sky. From a perch above the atmosphere, essentially the total magnitude of targets can be registered in exposures of a few minutes. Extinction is minimal and the flux is dominated by the light from old stars which is expected to correlate with the mass of the targets. In spite of the superior photometry, the correlation between mid-infrared luminosities and rotation rates extracted from neutral hydrogen profiles is slightly degraded from the correlation found with I band luminosities. A color correction recovers a correlation that provides comparable accuracy to that available at I band (~20% 1sigma in an individual distance) while retaining the advantages identified above. Without the color correction the relation between linewidth and [3.6] magnitudes is M^{b,i,k,a}_{[3.6]} = -20.34 - 9.74 (log W_{mx}^{i} -2.5). This description is found with a sample of 213 galaxies in 13 clusters that define the slope and 26 galaxies with Cepheid or tip of the red giant branch distances that define the zero point. A color corrected parameter M_{C_{[3.6]}} is constructed that has reduced scatter: M_{C_{[3.6]}} = -20.34 - 9.13 (log W_{mx}^{i} -2.5). Consideration of the 7 calibration clusters beyond 50 Mpc, outside the domain of obvious peculiar velocities, provides a preliminary Hubble Constant estimate of H_0=74+/-5 km/s/Mpc.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, 14 pages, 11 figures, 4 table

Guidance for benthic habitat mapping: an aerial photographic approach

This document, Guidance for Benthic Habitat Mapping: An Aerial Photographic Approach, describes proven technology that can be applied in an operational manner by state-level scientists and resource managers. This information is based on the experience gained by NOAA Coastal Services Center staff and state-level cooperators in the production of a series of benthic habitat data sets in Delaware, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, the Virgin Islands, and Washington, as well as during Center-sponsored workshops on coral remote sensing and seagrass and aquatic habitat assessment. (PDF contains 39 pages) The original benthic habitat document, NOAA Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP): Guidance for Regional Implementation (Dobson et al.), was published by the Department of Commerce in 1995. That document summarized procedures that were to be used by scientists throughout the United States to develop consistent and reliable coastal land cover and benthic habitat information. Advances in technology and new methodologies for generating these data created the need for this updated report, which builds upon the foundation of its predecessor

Precision Measurements of the Cluster Red Sequence using an Error Corrected Gaussian Mixture Model

The red sequence is an important feature of galaxy clusters and plays a crucial role in optical cluster detection. Measurement of the slope and scatter of the red sequence are affected both by selection of red sequence galaxies and measurement errors. In this paper, we describe a new error corrected Gaussian Mixture Model for red sequence galaxy identification. Using this technique, we can remove the effects of measurement error and extract unbiased information about the intrinsic properties of the red sequence. We use this method to select red sequence galaxies in each of the 13,823 clusters in the maxBCG catalog, and measure the red sequence ridgeline location and scatter of each. These measurements provide precise constraints on the variation of the average red galaxy populations in the observed frame with redshift. We find that the scatter of the red sequence ridgeline increases mildly with redshift, and that the slope decreases with redshift. We also observe that the slope does not strongly depend on cluster richness. Using similar methods, we show that this behavior is mirrored in a spectroscopic sample of field galaxies, further emphasizing that ridgeline properties are independent of environment.Comment: 33 pages, 14 Figures; A typo in Eq.A11 is fixed. The C++/Python codes for ECGMM can be downloaded from: https://sites.google.com/site/jiangangecgmm

Overcoming the Challenges Associated with Image-based Mapping of Small Bodies in Preparation for the OSIRIS-REx Mission to (101955) Bennu

The OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program and is the first U.S. mission to return samples from an asteroid to Earth. The most important decision ahead of the OSIRIS-REx team is the selection of a prime sample-site on the surface of asteroid (101955) Bennu. Mission success hinges on identifying a site that is safe and has regolith that can readily be ingested by the spacecraft's sampling mechanism. To inform this mission-critical decision, the surface of Bennu is mapped using the OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite and the images are used to develop several foundational data products. Acquiring the necessary inputs to these data products requires observational strategies that are defined specifically to overcome the challenges associated with mapping a small irregular body. We present these strategies in the context of assessing candidate sample-sites at Bennu according to a framework of decisions regarding the relative safety, sampleability, and scientific value across the asteroid's surface. To create data products that aid these assessments, we describe the best practices developed by the OSIRIS-REx team for image-based mapping of irregular small bodies. We emphasize the importance of using 3D shape models and the ability to work in body-fixed rectangular coordinates when dealing with planetary surfaces that cannot be uniquely addressed by body-fixed latitude and longitude.Comment: 31 pages, 10 figures, 2 table