Gaia Data Release 1: The archive visualisation service
Abstract
Context: The first Gaia data release (DR1) delivered a catalogue of astrometry and photometry for over a billion astronomical sources. Within the panoply of methods used for data exploration, visualisation is often the starting point and even the guiding reference for scientific thought. However, this is a volume of data that cannot be efficiently explored using traditional tools, techniques, and habits. Aims: We aim to provide a global visual exploration service for the Gaia archive, something that is not possible out of the box for most people. The service has two main goals. The first is to provide a software platform for interactive visual exploration of the archive contents, using common personal computers and mobile devices available to most users. The second aim is to produce intelligible and appealing visual representations of the enormous information content of the archive. Methods: The interactive exploration service follows a client-server design. The server runs close to the data, at the archive, and is responsible for hiding as far as possible the complexity and volume of the Gaia data from the client. This is achieved by serving visual detail on demand. Levels of detail are pre-computed using data aggregation and subsampling techniques. For DR1, the client is a web application that provides an interactive multi-panel visualisation workspace as well as a graphical user interface. Results: The Gaia archive Visualisation Service offers a web-based multi-panel interactive visualisation desktop in a browser tab. It currently provides highly configurable 1D histograms and 2D scatter plots of Gaia DR1 and the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS) with linked views. An innovative feature is the creation of ADQL queries from visually defined regions in plots. [abridged]
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1708.00195,
title = {Gaia Data Release 1: The archive visualisation service},
author = {A. Moitinho and A. Krone-Martins and H. Savietto and M. Barros and C. Barata and A. J. Falcão and T. Fernandes and J. Alves and A. F. Silva and M. Gomes and J. Bakker and A. G. A. Brown and J. González-Núñez and G. Gracia-Abril and R. Gutiérrez-Sánchez and J. Hernández and S. Jordan and X. Luri and B. Merin and F. Mignard and A. Mora and V. Navarro and W. O'Mullane and T. Sagristà Sellés and J. Salgado and J. C. Segovia and E. Utrilla and F. Arenou and J. H. J. de Bruijne and F. Jansen and M. McCaughrean and K. S. O'Flaherty and M. B. Taylor and A. Vallenari},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1708.00195},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
16 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Abstract abridged for arXiv submission. The service and image gallery here described are accessible from the Gaia archive "visualization" tab at http://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/