Missed Chances without Wavelength Filters in Celestia

[t00fri]

At the Spitzer Space Telescope site, I found an MPEG animation that also moves the center wavelength from visible to infrared for the spectacular Sombrero galaxy (M104):

http://ipac.jpl.nasa.gov/web_movies/pa/ssc2005-11v1.mpg

Enjoy,

Bye Fridger

[Paolo]

VERY cool images. It should be outstandng if Celestia should display
even statically something like these.

Ok for the discussion in order to discover as many possibilities, but a bit
of pragmatism is necessary.

Be aware! The following are only the my humble opinions!

1) what do we intend to achieve through multi-wavelength
displays? Who are the people we want to address with such
new features?

The answer should be a) otstanding but scientifically accurate, interesting
and educational images b) ftrom astronomers scientists till schoolboys. So
this new feature must be scientifically accurate but easy to use!

2) which objects to select and which to skip? It makes little
sense to just start somewhere at random.

You are right but, the answer to question 2) [wich to skip?] should be
NONE. This is obviously impossible. So this feature must be for specific
objects only. Not for entire classes of objects.

Accordingly to these answers and in order to be realistic and pragmatic
the only reasonable implementation will be something like alternate
textures. So if the user will select an object that has wavelenght filter
capabilities the context menu or the HUD should inform about it.

Only at this point the wavelenght filter slider should appear and it will
affect only the selected object. The slider should have a few steps or
many accordingly with the amount of wavelenght data available and with
the availability of coherent colormaps. When the object is unselected it
returns automatically to the standard visualization.

Starting from these assumptions the slider should affect the texture
applied to the in-place object or instead another window should be
opened displaying the texture and the wavelenght filter slider. Something
like the images in your previous post in this thread but more interactive
and integrated in Celestia.

Instead of all of this if the final result must be something different e.g. a
slider that effects the whole sky and so every displayed object( galaxies,
nebulas, stars, planets, etc), probably it will be a thing that will come a
looooong so far.

I agree with you. This is a complex thing. Only Chris should say the final
word. But if you will agree with my opinions and we decide for "bricolage"
it won't be very difficult to do. The alternate textures for DSC objects
alone will push Celestia another step beyond the other available
astronomical software.

[Slalomsk8er]

You are right but, the answer to question 2) [wich to skip?] should be
NONE. This is obviously impossible. So this feature must be for specific
objects only. Not for entire classes of objects.

Why not change all ojects that have the feature?

Accordingly to these answers and in order to be realistic and pragmatic
the only reasonable implementation will be something like alternate
textures. So if the user will select an object that has wavelenght filter
capabilities the context menu or the HUD should inform about it.

Absolut, I think we have to go a step more. There is more then one point with the textures that needs work. First, there is the wavelength thing and second the textures have a problem that is bigger then things that man can not see with his eyes (not visible wavelengths). The thing that is not ok with the textures is, that they are static! Even the cloudmap that needs to be rotated to look not wrong does not look good, because it is not changing over time

IMHO, the first step to overcome both problems is to build a naming convention for alt textures. With alt textures I think of all things that are more then the actual celestia standart that comes with it if you download and install it,

[twitchey]

The thing that is not ok with the textures is, that they are static! Even the cloudmap that needs to be rotated to look not wrong does not look good, because it is not changing over time

with changing the textures you could do variable stars, right?

with the wavelengths could you implement gamma bursts and pulsars?

[Slalomsk8er]

Yes and no. The things you imagine are possible to fake with textures but to get it look right an animated mesh is needed.

[twitchey]

huh?
I no it will look funny without a animated mesh, I just want to know if it can be done in Celestia

[Slalomsk8er]

http://hubblesite.org/sci.d.tech/behind ... ters.shtml
http://hubblesite.org/sci.d.tech/behind ... bble.shtml
http://hubblesite.org/sci.d.tech/behind ... /rgb.shtml
http://hubblesite.org/sci.d.tech/behind ... lbox.shtml

Here are some infos about the hubble image compositions.