ADASS 2004 Highlights

Some Talks and Demos of Interest at ADASS XIV, Pasadena, CA, Oct 17-21, 2004

Talks

• Blind Deconvolution, Tony Chan (UCLA)
  Both the image and psf are recovered from a blurred and noisy image.

• Pan-STARRS, Eugene Magnier, IfA
  Wide field imaging.

• GOODS

• Mars Exploration Rover

• Science with Virtual Observatory tools Paolo Padovani, ESO
  Doing real science (finding QSO 2s) without doing real observations.

• Aladin and the VO

• The Development of DS9

• SExtractor

"Focus" Demos

• NVO

• Python Tools for Analysis and Visualization of Astronomical Data
  
  • Tools from Space Telescope Science Institute:
    
    • numarray
      A replacement for the Numeric package; offers similar array manipulation functionality as matlab or IDL.
    • PyFITS
      A nice interface for accessing data in FITS files.
    • numdisplay Interface to ds9 or ximtool.
    • PyRAF Python replacement for the IRAF command language.
      
  • matplotlib A default plotting package for Python?\\\\
    An example:
    test_plot.py

    from matplotlib.matlab import *
    
    def join(x, sign=1):
        x1 = list(x)
        x2 = list(sign*x)
        x1.reverse()
        x1.extend(x2)
        return array(x1)
    
    func = "x**3 - x + 1"
    f = eval("lambda x: " + func)
    
    x = arange(-2, 8, 0.01)
    y2 = f(x)
    indx = where(y2 > 0)
    x = x[indx]
    y = sqrt(y2[indx])
    x = join(x)
    y = join(y, -1)
    
    figure(1, figsize=(6, 6))
    clf()
    plot(x, y, 'k')
    xymax = 20
    plot([0, 0], [-xymax, xymax], ':b', [-xymax, xymax], [0, 0], ':g')
    
    xx = arange(-1, 8)
    yy = sqrt(f(xx))
    indx = where((yy % 1) == 0)
    plot(xx[indx], yy[indx], "D")
    
    xlabel(r'$x$')
    ylabel(r'$y$')
    eq = '$y^2 = ' + func.replace('**', '^').replace('*', '') + '$'
    legend((eq, '$x=0$', '$y=0$'))
    
    xlim(-1.5, 2)
    ylim(-2, 2)
    

    
    Here's the plot that results:\\\\