Publication Type |
Journal Article |
School or College |
College of Engineering |
Department |
Computing, School of |
Creator |
Hansen, Charles D. |
Other Author |
Magnor, Marcus; Kindlmann, Gordon; Durie, Neb |
Title |
Reconstruction and visualization of planetary nebulae |
Date |
2005-09 |
Description |
Abstract-From our terrestrially confined viewpoint, the actual three-dimensional shape of distant astronomical objects is, in general, very challenging to determine. For one class of astronomical objects, however, spatial structure can be recovered from conventional 2D images alone. So-called planetary nebulae (PNe) exhibit pronounced symmetry characteristics that come about due to fundamental physical processes. Making use of this symmetry constraint, we present a technique to automatically recover the axisymmetric structure of many planetary nebulae from photographs. With GPU-based volume rendering driving a nonlinear optimization, we estimate the nebula's local emission density as a function of its radial and axial coordinates and we recover the orientation of the nebula relative to Earth. The optimization refines the nebula model and its orientation by minimizing the differences between the rendered image and the original astronomical image. The resulting model allows creating realistic 3D visualizations of these nebulae, for example, for planetarium shows and other educational purposes. In addition, the recovered spatial distribution of the emissive gas can help astrophysicists gain deeper insight into the formation processes of planetary nebulae. |
Type |
Text |
Publisher |
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) |
Journal Title |
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics |
Volume |
11 |
Issue |
5 |
First Page |
485 |
Last Page |
496 |
DOI |
10.1109/TVCG.2005.84 |
citatation_issn |
1077-2626 |
Language |
eng |
Bibliographic Citation |
Magnor, M., Kindlmann, G., Durie, N., & Hansen, C. D. (2005). Reconstruction and visualization of planetary nebulae. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 11(5), 485-96. |
Rights Management |
(c) 2005 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. |
Format Medium |
application/pdf |
Format Extent |
1,522,104 bytes |
Identifier |
ir-main,14600 |
ARK |
ark:/87278/s6mg86t6 |
Setname |
ir_uspace |
ID |
704398 |
Reference URL |
https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6mg86t6 |