WWT Newsletter: July 2021
Hello WWT community!
We’re continuing our effort to shine a light on what’s going on in the world of AAS WorldWide Telescope — we hope you enjoy this month’s updates! If you’ve got any of your own news to share, let the team know on social media or by emailing wwt@aas.org.
This update contains:
- Hundreds of fresh images in new NOIRLab collection
- WWT in Jupyter Notebooks: Sneak preview of new all-sky catalogues!
- WWT Events: AAS238 (recap) and SEPA (July 30/31)
- Embed WWT Panoramas Online
Best, Peter K. G. Williams, Director of the AAS WorldWide Telescope Project
Hundreds of fresh images in new NOIRLab collection
Peruse a multitude (over 325!) of new-to-WWT images from the NSF’s NOIRLab (formerly NOAO). Our favorites include the Andromeda Galaxy, the Helix Nebula (screenshot below), and the DECam image of the Center of the Milky Way — how about you? Let us know!
Importing this imagery into WWT has been a major effort over the last few months, calling upon the careful alignment skills of visualization expert David Weigel. Watch our original NOIRLab Hype Video and see where the imagery curation process all started.
WWT in Jupyter Notebooks: Sneak preview of new all-sky catalogues!
WWT’s brainiac developers have been hard at work adding new features for astronomy researchers. They’ve recently added a “Minimum Viable Product” of support for HiPS progressive catalogs, allowing you to see the positions of billions of surveyed stars as you explore the sky in WWT. Here’s a screenshot showing stars from the Gaia DR2 catalog overlaid on the famous Schlegel/Finkbeiner/Davis dust map:
Upcoming work will make all of these stars clickable so that you can to pull the catalog information into Python with pywwt — stay tuned!
WWT Events: AAS238 (recap) and SEPA (July 30/31)
WWT had a successful AAS238, with a workshop on Friday and sponsorship of a splinter session on “Astronomical Data in the Age of Science Platforms”. The splinter session had a high-water mark of 60 attendees and generated good discussion and enthusiasm. Presentations will be posted soon on the event website where people can also sign up to be notified of future activities including the preparation of a “needs assessment” report based on the day’s discussion.
Upcoming on July 30/31: is the Southeastern Planetarium Association Conference WWT workshop: “Creating Web Interactives Using AAS WorldWide Telescope”. Attendees will explore how to create custom web interactives allowing individuals to continue their planetarium experience virtually using WWT. Join U.S. Space & Rocket Center INTUITIVE Planetarium Director, David Weigel, for a brief WWT web interactives tutorial and examine various use cases. From zoomable imagery to interactive tours, there are limitless possibilities for your creativity.
Embed WWT Panoramas Online
Brand new to WWT’s embed tool is the ability to explore panoramic imagery. Check out a fullscreen panorama of the Apollo 17 Station 5 (so many boulders!) that was created using the embed tool. It’s easy to create your own — our tool will generate HTML <iframe> code that you can plug right into a website.
Stay in Touch!
We always love to hear from WWT users and enthusiasts. Follow our social media accounts, email wwt@aas.org, or post on the WWT forum.