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Paper: Imaging in ChIPS
Volume: 442, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XX (ADASSXX)
Page: 637
Authors: Miller, J.; Burke, D.; Evans, I.; Evans, J. D.; McLaughlin, W.
Abstract: The Chandra Interactive Plotting System (ChIPS) included in CIAO now allows users to incorporate and manipulate images in their plots. ChIPS uses the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) as a back end to provide basic imaging support, which includes displaying images in pseudo color or RGBA true color, adjusting the translucency of images, and several ways to threshold images. Users also have the ability to enhance them with annotations and place curves and contours directly onto the image. ChIPS imaging support provides a mechanism to adjust the image display resolution as necessary to provide high quality publication ready output. Beyond basic imaging, ChIPS includes the ability to recognize and incorporate WCS metadata into plots. ChIPS accurately calculates the intersections of world coordinate grids and plot axes, ensuring that these elements distort correctly with a tangent plane projection. Multiple image overlays are handled by reprojecting the overlaid images onto the reference image's coordinate system. New zooming and panning functions, and existing limits commands, use the WCS information from the image overlays to update the axes to reflect the new field of view being displayed. Although ChIPS already provides a number of user interactive commands, additional interactive capabilities are being considered for future releases. Enhanced interactive interfaces alongside the ability to script ChIPS in Python provide a more capable and user-friendly system.
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