Displaying Digital Deep Sky Images
Abstract
In Astronomy, many activities such as survey data quality visual control, crowd-sourced projects, atlas publishing and outreach initiatives require digital images of the deep sky to be displayed in a legible and consistent way for both professional and more general audiences. Important technical facts about display devices and standards are unfortunately unknown to most professional astronomers and the appearance of published images is often unsatisfactory as a result of a questionable trial-and-error approach. In this short paper I discuss the main technical issues one faces when displaying astronomical images in various contexts. I propose some guidelines as well as a software implementation, the STIFF package, to automate the process of providing consistent, ready-for-use pictures directly from science image data.
- Publication:
-
Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XXI
- Pub Date:
- September 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012ASPC..461..263B