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Paper: 3D Visualization and Detection of Outflows From Young Stars
Monograph: 6, Twenty Years of ADASS
Page: 473
Authors:
Abstract: We present a novel method for the identification of outflows from young stars using 3D isosurface models of molecular line data. Conventional methods for outflow detection, such as the inspection of individual spectra or integrated maps, are tedious and very inefficient when examining large data sets. As part of the Astronomical Medicine project at the Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC) at Harvard University we utilized the 3D Slicer application to visualize 12CO and 13CO data cubes (with more than 150,000 spectra) from the COMPLETE Survey of Star Forming Regions. We generated 3D isosurface models in position-position-velocity space thus providing a visual representation of the gas kinematics in the cloud. These models were then inspected by eye for the rapid identification of outflows in the form of spikes (since the velocity is measured along the line of sight) from the main distribution of gas. Using this method on the Perseus molecular cloud complex (over 8 square degrees), we were able to identify dozens of new outflows and extend the lengths of many previously identified outflows. We are also working on other visual and analytical methods, collaborating with our colleagues at the Harvard Medical School, for identifying outflows and other structures in star forming regions using segmentation algorithms for feature identification.
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