ACCESS Open House Demonstration Abstracts

Astro3Vis

Scientific Instrumentation Team

David Agard, 415-476-2521
agard@msg.ucsf.edu
Clint Potter, 217-244-1958
cpotter@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Dick Crutcher, 217-333-9581
crutcher@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Ray Plante, 217-244-4208
rplante@ncsa.uiuc.edu

Astro3Vis: Tools for 3-D Visualization on the Desktop

NCSA Radio Astronomy Imaging Group
http://monet.astro.uiuc.edu/Astro3Vis
Ray Plante
rplante@ncsa.uiuc.edu

Astro3Vis is a pair of tools that bring 3D visualizations to common desktop environments. The VRML Server is a tool for creating visualizations of 3D astronomical images in VRML format over the Web. Currently implemented as service of the NCSA Astronomy Digital Image Library (ADIL), visitors can use its Java interface to load 3D images from the Library, set visualization parameters, and download the result in VRML format. Astro3D, the other tool in the Astro3Vis team, is a pure-Java VRML browser with a number of features especially useful for scientific applications. Besides the usual navagation features, Astro3D allows users to track data positions, annotate the visualizations with text and simple graphics, and save 2D snapshots. When used with the VRML Server, Astro3D can track sky coordinates associated with data and zoom into subregions.

Astro3Vis was developed through a collaboration between the Radio Astronomy Imaging Group (Scientific Instruments AT team), the Visualization and Virtual Environments Group, the Java3D group, and the Habanero group (supporting collaborative features). The VRMLServer is a Web-based version of the CaveVis toolkit. It is currently being run as a service of the NCSA ADIL, and will be incorporated as a tool for the RAI Networked Telescope project. It has been used as in a pilot program for teaching general college-level astronomy. This work has fed the development of similar tools used by the Cosmology AT team and the Visualization Workbench (now under development).

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