IDIA
Visualisation
Laboratory
Research in visualisation, analysis and methods

Latest News

MeerKAT Discovers Mystery Clouds
An international team led by astronomers Gyula Józsa, Michelle Cluver, and Thomas Jarrett has utilized the South African MeerKAT telescope to discover a mysterious chain of hydrogen gas clouds the size of a massive galaxy. Click the image for the full press release, including additional graphics, 3D visualisations, details and link to the paper:
Józsa et al. 2021
Astronomers reveal cosmic ribbon around rare galaxy
A team of international astronomers, including those from the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Queen’s University, have revealed a galaxy wrapped in a cosmic ‘ribbon’ using a telescope owned and operated by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency. Click the image for the full press release, including additional graphics, videos, details and link to the paper:
Deg et al. 2023

About The Vislab

Ongoing Research
(See Research for details)

Multiband mosaic image of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster from the WISE Extended Source Catalogue (WXSC, Jarrett et al. 2019).
Ongoing Research (See Gallery for details):
From the Iziko Planetarium and Digital Dome, the cosmic web of the local universe, galaxy groups highlighted with spheres.
Ongoing Research (See Research for paper details):
Lambert et al (2020) uses cutting-edge visualisation techniques in the Vislab to interrogate galaxy group substructures in a new galaxy group catalogue for the recently-completed 2MASS Redshift Survey
Ongoing Research (See Gallery for details):
From the Iziko Planetarium and Digital Dome, cosmological simulations of the Universe, with particle motion vectors
Ongoing Research (See Gallery for details):
Volumetric Rendering of a mouse brain in the Iziko Planetarium and Digital Dome
Ongoing Research (See Gallery for details):
Visualising Andromeda using the Cobra Panorama
Ongoing Research (See Gallery for details):
Experimentation with Virtual Reality visualisation
Ongoing Research (See Research for details):
The LMC from the The WISE Extended Source Catalogue (WXSC, Jarrett et al. 2019)
Ongoing Research (See Gallery for details):
The Iziko Planetarium and Digital Dome as a powerful Educational Tool
Ongoing Research (See Gallery for details):
Visualising Big Data using high-resolution video wall WALIE
Ongoing Research (See Research for details):
The SMC from the The WISE Extended Source Catalogue (WXSC, Jarrett et al. 2019)
Ongoing Research (See Gallery for details):
From the control desk of the Iziko Planetarium and Digital Dome, the 2MASS Galaxy Redshift Catalogue
New Paper! Naluminsa et al. (2021)
Naluminsa et al. 2021 presents the global scaling relations between the neutral atomic hydrogen gas, the stellar disk and the star forming disk in a sample of 228 nearby galaxies that are both spatially and spectrally resolved in HI line emission.
New Paper! Yao et al. (2020)
Yao et al. 2020 present a detailed study of emission-line systems in the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) G23 region, making use of Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) photometry that includes carefully measured resolved sources. Click the image to read more.
New Paper! Bok et al. (2020)
Using mid-infrared star formation rate and stellar mass indicators in WISE,
Bok et al. 2020 construct and contrast the relation between star formation rate and stellar mass for isolated and paired galaxies.
New Planetarium Film! Rising Star
(24 minutes, VR or Fulldome, 4K or 8K unidirectional) Rising Star takes you on an astronomical journey from our beginnings through the development of astronomy research in South Africa and looks at what the future of astronomy holds for the country.
Click here or contact the Vislab for more details.
New Papers Released! 
Jarrett et al (2020) and Marchetti et al (2020)
 VR research conducted by the IDIA VisLab
and the beta release of iDaVIE-v

In
Jarrett 2020, we present development and results from custom-built interactive VR tools, called the iDaVIE suite (Marchetti 2020) , that are informed and driven by research on galaxy evolution, cosmic web large-scale structure, galaxy-galaxy interactions, and gas/kinematics of nearby galaxies in survey and targeted observations.

In partnership between UCT Astronomy and the IDIA, a laboratory for visual analytics has been created to develop and test hardware and software solutions for interactive visualisation of large astronomical data sets.
 
Two facilities comprise the laboratory, one is located at the RW James building (UCT upper campus; astronomy department) and the other is the Iziko Planetarium & Digital Dome, located in the heart of Cape Town. 

Click below to see how we visualise data.

View The Gallery

What We Do

As scientific data sets become larger and more complex, it is necessary to migrate to new technologies to facilitate scientific analysis and exploration. With the advent of big data, cloud technologies provide a clean solution for managing and processing data sets that would otherwise be unmanageable.
 
As we shift paradigms to having our scientific data living in the cloud, it is necessary to develop the tools and techniques  to enable science on these large data sets.

See below for the latest video of our visualisation work or click the button to see more.

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The Tools We Use

RW James, UCT

WALIE toolVirtual Reality HeadsetCobra panorama
Iziko Museum, Company Gardens