Related papers: Imagination and Understanding through Astrophysica…
The quality of modern astronomical data, the power of modern computers and the agility of current image-processing software enable the creation of high-quality images in a purely digital form. The combination of these technological…
Astronomy has a rich tradition of using color photography and imaging, for visualization in research as well as for sharing scientific discoveries in formal and informal education settings (i.e., for "public outreach.") In the modern era,…
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming astronomical research, yet the scientific community has largely treated this transformation as an engineering challenge rather than an epistemological one. This perspective article argues that…
This article looks at philosophical aspects and questions that modern astrophysical research gives rise to. Other than cosmology, astrophysics particularly deals with understanding phenomena and processes operating at "intermediate" cosmic…
Some 400 years after Galileo, modern telescopes have enabled humanity to "see" what the natural eye cannot. Astronomical images today contain information about incredibly large objects located across vast distances and reveal information…
The field of astronomy is experiencing a data explosion driven by significant advances in observational instrumentation, and classical methods often fall short of addressing the complexity of modern astronomical datasets. Probabilistic…
The observation of space seems to have always caused wonder into people's collective consciousness, generating a series of historical myths. More recently specially with the development of better tools alongside the constant refinement of…
Bold colour images from telescopes act as extraordinary ambassadors for research astronomers because they pique the public's curiosity. But are they snapshots documenting physical reality? Or are we looking at artistic spacescapes created…
Mathematical understanding is built in many ways. Among these, illustration has been a companion and tool for research for as long as research has taken place. We use the term illustration to encompass any way one might bring a mathematical…
Every year, hundreds of images from telescopes on the ground and in space are released to the public, making their way into popular culture through everything from computer screens to postage stamps. These images span the entire…
The contextual information of Web images is investigated to address the issue of enriching their index characterizations with semantic descriptors and therefore bridge the semantic gap (i.e. the gap between the low-level content-based…
While the relation between visualization and scientific understanding has been a topic of long-standing discussion, recent developments in physics have pushed the boundaries of this debate to new and still unexplored realms. For it is…
The purpose of this paper is to expound and clarify the mathematics and explanations commonly employed in certain notable areas of astronomy and astrophysics. The first section concentrates upon the mathematics employed to represent and…
Trying to be effective (no matter who exactly and in what field) a person face the problem which inevitably destroys all our attempts to easily get to a desired goal. The problem is the existence of some insuperable barriers for our mind,…
Image Processing in Astronomy is a major field of research and involves a lot of techniques pertaining to improve analyzing the properties of the celestial objects or obtaining preliminary inference from the image data. In this paper, we…
In a recent paper, published at arXiv:0910.2381, we started a discussion on the new possibilities arising from the use of fractional differential calculus in image processing. We have seen that the fractional calculation is able to enhance…
The concept of metaphor, in particular graphical (or visual) metaphor, is central to the field of information visualization. Information graphics and interactive information visualization systems employ a variety of metaphorical devices to…
On the occasion of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009), we present a new interactive dictionary of astronomy and astrophysics, which contains about 7000 entries. This interdisciplinary and multicultural work is intended for…
Asteroid photometry has three major applications: providing clues about asteroid surface physical properties and compositions, facilitating photometric corrections, and helping design and plan ground-based and spacecraft observations. The…
Scientific discovery is mediated by ideas that, after being formulated in hypotheses, can be tested, validated, and quantified before they eventually lead to accepted concepts. Computer-mediated discovery in astrophysics is no exception,…