552 research outputs found
Lossless Astronomical Image Compression and the Effects of Noise
We compare a variety of lossless image compression methods on a large sample
of astronomical images and show how the compression ratios and speeds of the
algorithms are affected by the amount of noise in the images. In the ideal case
where the image pixel values have a random Gaussian distribution, the
equivalent number of uncompressible noise bits per pixel is given by Nbits
=log2(sigma * sqrt(12)) and the lossless compression ratio is given by R =
BITPIX / Nbits + K where BITPIX is the bit length of the pixel values and K is
a measure of the efficiency of the compression algorithm.
We perform image compression tests on a large sample of integer astronomical
CCD images using the GZIP compression program and using a newer FITS
tiled-image compression method that currently supports 4 compression
algorithms: Rice, Hcompress, PLIO, and GZIP. Overall, the Rice compression
algorithm strikes the best balance of compression and computational efficiency;
it is 2--3 times faster and produces about 1.4 times greater compression than
GZIP. The Rice algorithm produces 75%--90% (depending on the amount of noise in
the image) as much compression as an ideal algorithm with K = 0.
The image compression and uncompression utility programs used in this study
(called fpack and funpack) are publicly available from the HEASARC web site. A
simple command-line interface may be used to compress or uncompress any FITS
image file.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, to be published in PAS
Optimal Compression of Floating-point Astronomical Images Without Significant Loss of Information
We describe a compression method for floating-point astronomical images that
gives compression ratios of 6 -- 10 while still preserving the scientifically
important information in the image. The pixel values are first preprocessed by
quantizing them into scaled integer intensity levels, which removes some of the
uncompressible noise in the image. The integers are then losslessly compressed
using the fast and efficient Rice algorithm and stored in a portable FITS
format file. Quantizing an image more coarsely gives greater image compression,
but it also increases the noise and degrades the precision of the photometric
and astrometric measurements in the quantized image. Dithering the pixel values
during the quantization process can greatly improve the precision of
measurements in the images. This is especially important if the analysis
algorithm relies on the mode or the median which would be similarly quantized
if the pixel values are not dithered. We perform a series of experiments on
both synthetic and real astronomical CCD images to quantitatively demonstrate
that the magnitudes and positions of stars in the quantized images can be
measured with the predicted amount of precision. In order to encourage wider
use of these image compression methods, we have made available a pair of
general-purpose image compression programs, called fpack and funpack, which can
be used to compress any FITS format image.Comment: Accepted PAS
Development of the FITS tools package for multiple software environments
The HEASARC is developing a package of general purpose software for analyzing data files in FITS format. This paper describes the design philosophy which makes the software both machine-independent (it runs on VAXs, Suns, and DEC-stations) and software environment-independent. Currently the software can be compiled and linked to produce IRAF tasks, or alternatively, the same source code can be used to generate stand-alone tasks using one of two implementations of a user-parameter interface library. The machine independence of the software is achieved by writing the source code in ANSI standard Fortran or C, using the machine-independent FITSIO subroutine interface for all data file I/O, and using a standard user-parameter subroutine interface for all user I/O. The latter interface is based on the Fortran IRAF Parameter File interface developed at STScI. The IRAF tasks are built by linking to the IRAF implementation of this parameter interface library. Two other implementations of this parameter interface library, which have no IRAF dependencies, are now available which can be used to generate stand-alone executable tasks. These stand-alone tasks can simply be executed from the machine operating system prompt either by supplying all the task parameters on the command line or by entering the task name after which the user will be prompted for any required parameters. A first release of this FTOOLS package is now publicly available. The currently available tasks are described, along with instructions on how to obtain a copy of the software
PHOTZIP: A Lossy FITS Image Compression Algorithm that Protects User-Defined Levels of Photometric Integrity
A lossy compression algorithm is presented for astronomical images that
protects photometric integrity for detected point sources at a user-defined
level of statistical tolerance. PHOTZIP works by modeling, smoothing, and then
compressing the astronomical background behind self-detected point sources,
while completely preserving values in and around those sources. The algorithm
also guaranties a maximum absolute difference (in terms of ) between
each compressed and original background pixel, allowing users to control
quality and lossiness. For present purposes, PHOTZIP has been tailored to FITS
format and is freely available over the web. PHOTOZIP has been tested over a
broad range of astronomical imagery and is in routine use by the Night Sky Live
(NSL) project for compression of all-sky FITS images. Compression factors
depend on source densities, but for the canonical NSL implementation, a PHOTZIP
(and subsequently GZIP or BZIP2) compressed file is typically 20% of its
uncompressed size.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in A
Chandra Observation of Luminous and Ultraluminous X-ray Binaries in M101
X-ray binaries in the Milky Way are among the brightest objects on the X-ray
sky. With the increasing sensitivity of recent missions, it is now possible to
study X-ray binaries in nearby galaxies. We present data on six luminous
sources in the nearby spiral galaxy, M101, obtained with the Chandra ACIS-S. Of
these, five appear to be similar to ultraluminous sources in other galaxies,
while the brightest source, P098, shows some unique characteristics. We present
our interpretation of the data in terms of an optically thick outflow, and
discuss implications.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal (16 pages including
4 figures
The Disk and Dark Halo Mass of the Barred Galaxy NGC 4123. I. Observations
The non-circular streaming motions in barred galaxies are sensitive to the
mass of the bar and can be used to lift the degeneracy between disk and dark
matter halo encountered when fitting axisymmetric rotation curves of disk
galaxies. In this paper, we present photometric and kinematic observations of
NGC 4123, a barred galaxy of modest size (V_rot = 130 km/sec, L = 0.7 L_*),
which reveal strong non-circular motions. The bar has straight dust lanes and
an inner Lindblad resonance. The disk of NGC 4123 has no sign of truncation out
to 10 scale lengths, and star-forming regions are found well outside R_25. A
Fabry-Perot H-alpha velocity field shows velocity jumps of >100 km/sec at the
location of the dust lanes within the bar, indicating shocks in the gas flow.
VLA observations yield the velocity field of the H I disk. Axisymmetric mass
models yield good fits to the rotation curve outside the bar regionfor disk
I-band M/L of 2.25 or less, and dark halos with either isothermal or power-law
profiles can fit the data well. In a companion paper, we model the full 2-D
velocity field, including non-circular motions, to determine the stellar M/L
and the mass of the dark halo.Comment: accepted by ApJ, 16 pages, 9 figures (1 color), uses emulateapj.sty,
onecolfloat.st
The properties of the Galactic bar implied by gas kinematics in the inner Milky Way
Longitude-velocity (l-V) diagrams of H I and CO gas in the inner Milky Way
have long been known to be inconsistent with circular motion in an axisymmetric
potential. Several lines of evidence suggest that the Galaxy is barred, and gas
flow in a barred potential could be consistent with the observed ``forbidden''
velocities and other features in the data. We compare the H I observations to
l-V diagrams synthesized from 2-D fluid dynamical simulations of gas flows in a
family of barred potentials. The gas flow pattern is very sensitive to the
parameters of the assumed potential, which allows us to discriminate among
models. We present a model that reproduces the outer contour of the H I l-V
diagram reasonably well; this model has a strong bar with a semimajor axis of
3.6 kpc, an axis ratio of approximately 3:1, an inner Lindblad resonance (ILR),
and a pattern speed of 42 km/s/kpc, and matches the data best when viewed from
34\deg to the bar major axis. The behavior of the models, combined with the
constraint that the shocks in the Milky Way bar should resemble those in
external barred galaxies, leads us to conclude that wide ranges of parameter
space are incompatible with the observations. In particular we suggest that the
bar must be fairly strong, must have an ILR, and cannot be too end-on, with the
bar major axis at 35\deg +/- 5\deg to the line of sight. The H I data exhibit
larger forbidden velocities over a wider longitude range than are seen in
molecular gas; this important difference is the reason our favored model
differs so significantly from other recently proposed models.Comment: 23 pages, 14 figures, 1 table, uses emulateapj and psfig, 640 kb.
Submitted to Ap
Finding Galaxy Clusters using Voronoi Tessellations
We present an objective and automated procedure for detecting clusters of
galaxies in imaging galaxy surveys. Our Voronoi Galaxy Cluster Finder (VGCF)
uses galaxy positions and magnitudes to find clusters and determine their main
features: size, richness and contrast above the background. The VGCF uses the
Voronoi tessellation to evaluate the local density and to identify clusters as
significative density fluctuations above the background. The significance
threshold needs to be set by the user, but experimenting with different choices
is very easy since it does not require a whole new run of the algorithm. The
VGCF is non-parametric and does not smooth the data. As a consequence, clusters
are identified irrispective of their shape and their identification is only
slightly affected by border effects and by holes in the galaxy distribution on
the sky. The algorithm is fast, and automatically assigns members to
structures.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures. It uses aa.cls (included). Accepted by A&
Chandra X-ray Sources in M101
A deep (98.2 ks) Chandra Cycle-1 observation has revealed a wealth of
discrete X-ray sources as well as diffuse emission in the nearby face-on spiral
galaxy M101. From this rich dataset we have created a catalog of the 110
sources from the S3 chip detected with a significance of >3 sigma,
corresponding to a flux of ~1.0E-16 ergs/cm/cm/s and a luminosity of 1.0E36
ergs/s for a distance to M101 of 7.2 Mpc. The sources display a distinct
correlation with the spiral arms and include a variety of X-ray binaries,
supersoft sources, supernova remnants, and other objects of which only ~27 are
likely to be background sources. There are only a few sources in the interarm
regions, and most of these have X-ray colors consistent with that of background
AGNs. The derived log N-log S relation for the sources in M101 (background
subtracted) has a slope of -0.80+/-0.05 over the range of 1.0E36 - 1.0E38
ergs/s. The nucleus is resolved into 2 nearly identical X-ray sources, each
with a 0.5-2.0 keV flux of 4.0E37 ergs/s. One of these sources coincides with
the optical nucleus, and the other coincides with a cluster of stars 110 pc to
the south.Comment: 39 pages including 13 figures and 4 tables; ApJ, in pres
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