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Paper: IMAGE EXPLORER: Astronomical Image Analysis on an HTML5-based Web Application
Volume: 485, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XXIII
Page: 417
Authors: Gopu, A.; Hayashi, S.; Young, M. D.
Abstract: Large datasets produced by recent astronomical imagers cause the traditional paradigm for basic visual analysis – typically downloading one's entire image dataset and using desktop clients like DS9, Aladin, etc. – to not scale, despite advances in desktop computing power and storage. This paper describes Image Explorer, a web framework that offers several of the basic visualization and analysis functionality commonly provided by tools like DS9, on any HTML5 capable web browser on various platforms. It uses a combination of the modern HTML5 canvas, JavaScript, and several layers of lossless PNG tiles producted from the FITS image data. Astronomers are able to rapidly and simultaneously open up several images on their web-browser, adjust the intensity min/max cutoff or its scaling function, and zoom level, apply color-maps, view position and FITS header information, execute typically used data reduction codes on the corresponding FITS data using the FRIAA framework, and overlay tiles for source catalog objects, etc.
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