--
BrianKent - 2010-12-10
Main Gaia webpage and installation can be found here:
http://star-www.dur.ac.uk/~pdraper/gaia/gaia.html
with installation instructions for 32 and 64-bit Linux here:
http://starlink.jach.hawaii.edu/starlink/HawaikiDownload
The shell script gaia.sh in bin/gaia will start the program on a Linux machine.
Gaia Benefits
Great graphics capabilities for annotation
Data cube management is present, including slicing
the cube along any axis
Profiles for different drawing tools shapes
can be used for slightly more accurate integrated
spectral profiles
2D signal extraction with appropriate libraries installed
Comprehensive photometry utilities including bias and dark subtraction
Distance measure in sky units for arbitrary image slices
Sortable FITS header GUI
Gaia3D and CUPID have great potential for 3D rendering, but volume rendering is slow for large files
Gaia3D controls (read help at bottom of GUI) allow for easy manipulation.
Auto-scaling works, but it can be tricky to pick the right values.
Most menu items and functions are automatic and will open depending
on the dimension of the FITS file
Gaia Drawbacks
Not all data cube (including collapse and channel map features) features will work
Axis labels are not quite super mongo publication quality, but can be improved
in the "Image-Analysis" menu with some effort.
Fitting routines require extra libraries - further research required...
Examples
It is useful to illustrate the CUPID 3D/Gaid attributes.
Files for galaxy NGC 6503 are available as attachments to this wiki page.
The data are all public data from the NRAO FITS site or surveys on
SkyView
and include DSS optical imaging (red,blue), GALEX (far,near UV), and an HI data cube.
Volume rendering with Gaia3D and CUPID
1. Start Gaia (./gaia.sh)
2. Open a FITS cube (File->Open->ngc6503.fits)
3. A pop up console will appear "Display image sections of a cube". Choose (View->3D visualization->Volume Rendering)
4. A pop up application (see images attached) will allow for zooming (mouse wheel), rotation (left mouse -click to "push" the cube around an axis),
and translation (right mouse).
5. The default orange color scheme seems to work best.
6. A cube that is 1024 x 1024 by 64 will begin to max out the volume rendering in CUPID 3D. However, it works great for smaller cubes.