Archived Event: WWT @ AAS234
St Louis, MO, USA; 2019 June 5–9
Reproduced from journals.aas.org.
The AAS’ WorldWide Telescope team has been working hard this year to enable more researchers to use WWT in their work. We’re looking forward to sharing the fruits of our labors with you at the upcoming St. Louis meeting! In particular, we’ll be putting on three WWT tutorials. Bring a laptop to each of these tutorials. The Chrome web browser is recommended for use with WWT.
Outside of the tutorials, WWT Director Peter K. G. Williams and Python developer O. Justin Otor will be attendance and will be more than happy to discuss the project with you! The best way to get their attention during the conference will be to tweet at @wwtelescope.
Introduction to the AAS WorldWide Telescope
| Monday 6/10 | 1:40 PM - 2:40 PM | Wabash Cannonball Room | Peter K. G. Williams |
The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is the AAS’s official tool for visually exploring humanity’s scientific understanding of the Universe. WWT is primarily a website that allows users to interactively explore terabytes of astronomical data in a seamlessly integrated 4D simulation of the known universe. But the open-source WWT software ecosystem also includes a Windows application that can power planetariums, a cloud-based web service for discovering and sharing astronomical data, and a Python module that allows researchers to integrate WWT into their Jupyter notebooks. This interactive tutorial will introduce attendees to all of these aspects of WWT as well as its applications to research, education, and public outreach.
Making Tours with the AAS WorldWide Telescope
| Tuesday 6/11 | 1:40 PM - 2:40 PM | Wabash Cannonball Room | Peter K. G. Williams |
Alongside its open-ended exploration capabilities, WWT can be used to create and view “tours”, are which scripted multimedia presentations of astronomical concepts and data: like PowerPoint, but rooted in a 4D simulation of the known universe. In this tutorial, attendees will learn the basics of how to create tours and learn tips for integrating them into their classrooms, public outreach events, and research.
Interactive Data Exploration with pywwt
| Wednesday 6/12 | 1:40 PM - 2:40 PM | Wabash Cannonball Room | O. Justin Otor |
At the heart of WWT is a 4D simulation of the known universe connected to a WebGL-based rendering engine that can dynamically access terabytes of astronomical data stored in the Cloud or on your own computer. With the “pywwt” Python module, you can embed this technology in your Jupyter notebooks, integrate the WWT environment with your own images and data sets, and control the resulting visualizations either interactively or programmatically. Imagine DS9 in Jupyter, with a Python API! In this tutorial, attendees will learn the basics of using pywwt and explore its capabilities for loading and visualizing FITS files and Astropy data tables.
If you won’t be able to make it to St. Louis this year, we’ll be posting all of our training materials and a write-up of what transpired. Email wwt@aas.org to be notified as everything is posted!
To get back to this page in the future, you can use the shortlink http://bit.ly/wwt-aas234.