Visualization in Astrophysics
Carnegie + SCI Mini-Workshop

OpenSpace: An open-source Bridge between Scientists and the Public

Alexander Bock

Astronomy is a unique vessel to communicate complex scientific processes to the general public. These explanations become even more meaningful when delivered by scientists that work with the subject matter directly. In order to improve this worthwhile effort in science education, we developed the open-source software OpenSpace that targets laptops and planetariums and enables interactive astronomy visualizations on a variety of scales. Recent efforts have been undertaken to enable scientists quick access to these facilities without the need for complex data conversion by interoperating with other data analysis platforms, such as glue. This talk presents some of the previous work in OpenSpace and presents some of this ongoing work.

Astronomical Datasets for the 21st Century

Juna Kollmeier

In this overview talk, I'll go over the datasets that the community will have access to by 2030. This will show that not only the quantity, but the nature of this data has qualitatively changed thus demanding new methods of navigating and exploring. The success of Gaia, SDSS, DESI, 4MOST, PFS, ZTF, and ultimately LSST means the need for these new tools is now. I'll present the basic character of the data as well as some of the questions we hope to answer from it.

Visualization for Astronomy: A State-Of-The-Art Overview

Michael Young

In this short overview talk, I'll talk about some of the state-of-the-art techniques that combine visualization with astronomy. I classify efforts over the past decade under four categories: multi-field visualization, feature detection, modeling and simulation, as well as global vs. local visualization. I hope this overview talk will generate discussions toward challenges and opportunities in astrophysical visualization.