For those not on the ws-gaf list.
Al.
--
Dr. A. Allan, School of Physics, University of Exeter
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 17:24:01 +0100
From: Savas Parastatidis <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc: R K Machap <[log in to unmask]>, Bob Mann <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: StarBrowser
Dear all,
As part of his MSc course, Rumesh Machap did some excellent work for us.
He developed a 3D visualisation system using OpenGL for plotting the
stars in our galaxy. The system uses information from the SDSS database
(accessible through the SkyServer) and draws them in 3D. The user can
"fly" around the galaxy. Using the information from the observations the
colour of the stars is represented and their distance from earth
calculated.
If one clicks on a star, the actual photograph from the database is
displayed (retrieved using a Web Service request).
Currently the StarBrowser uses only 70K stars (nothing compared to the
number of stars in our galaxy). Rumesh is now finishing his dissertation
from which we hope to produce a paper. He tells me that he has
experimented with 1,000,000 stars from the SSA archive too. We'll
produce a video of that too and send it around.
The system has been developed in a manner to allow realtime retrieval of
the information using Web Services or other technologies. We'll write
more about this and let you know.
A short video of the current state of the StarBrowser is available at
http://wsgaf.ncl.ac.uk/videos/StarBrowser.wmv (~10MB).
We'll produce more videos shortly.
Regards,
--
Savas Parastatidis
http://savas.parastatidis.name
|