Paper

PolarVis: Towards Web-based Polarimetric Analysis

Makhathini, S, Sebokolodi, L M, Lexy A L Andati, Smirnov, O M

2023

Overview

Astronomers performing polarimetric analysis on astronomical images often have to manually identify locations on their objects of interest, such as galaxies, which exhibit the influence of magnetic forces due to interaction with their environments or inherent processes. These locations are known as Lines of Sight (LoS). Analysing the various lines of sight can provide insight into the electromagnetic nature of the astrophysical object in question and its surroundings. For each LoS, astronomers generate diagnostic plots to map out the variation of the corresponding electromagnetic field, such as those of fractional polarisation and Faraday spectra. However, associating the different LoS diagnostic plots to their positions on an astronomical image requires alternating between the plots and the images. As a result, determining whether the location of the LoS influences its magnetic field variation by analysing its diagnostic plots becomes arduous due to the absence of a direct way of linking the two. PolarVis is an effort towards allowing an almost instant view of the interactive diagnostic plots corresponding to a given line of sight at the click of a button on that line of sight on the image, using an interactive web-based FITS viewer -- JS9.

• Publisher: Cornell University Library, arXiv.org
• Subject: Astronomical polarimetry / Celestial bodies / Diagnostic systems / Electromagnetic fields / Galaxies / Line of sight