Interactive visual analysis and exploration of astrophysical data

Abstract

Astrophysicists, challenged with the task of accumulating knowledge by extracting useful information from their data sets which are often extremely large and multivariate, depend upon effective scientific visualization. This paper focuses on the importance of interactivity with astrophysical data, an iterative process of changing parameters to produce new images, in order to analyze, explore and learn. Three different examples are presented, of interactive visual analysis and exploration of astrophysical data.