Jump to content

Digital Universe Atlas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Digital Universe Atlas
Original author(s)Brian Abbott, Carter Emmart, Steven Marx, Ryan Wyatt
Developer(s)American Museum of Natural History'sHayden Planetarium,National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Initial release2002
Operating systemWindows,macOS,Linux,AmigaOS 4,IRIX
PlatformPC
TypeEducational software
LicenseIllinois Open Source License
Websitewww.haydenplanetarium.org/universe

Digital Universe Atlasis afree open source softwareplanetarium application,available under the terms of the Illinois Open Source License, and running onLinux,Windows,macOS(10.5 and above),AmigaOS 4,andIRIX.

It is a standalone 4-dimensional space visualization application built on the programmablePartiviewdata visualization engine designed by Stuart Levy of theNational Center for Supercomputing Applications(NCSA) as an adjunct of the NCSA'sVirtual Directorvirtual choreography project. The Virtual Universe Atlas project was launched by theAmerican Museum of Natural History'sHayden Planetariumwith significant programming support from theNational Aeronautics and Space Administrationas well as Stuart Levy. The database draws on theNational Virtual Observatory.

Along withCelestiaandOrbiter,and unlike most other planetarium applications, Digital Universe shares the capacity to visualize space from points outside Earth. Building on work by Japan'sRIKEN,its planet renderings and zoom visualizations can match or exceed Celestia and Orbiter. Unlike Celestia and Orbiter, highly accurate visualization from distances beyond theMilky Waygalaxy is integral to the software and the datasets. This allows for unrivaled flexibility in plotting itineraries that reveal true distances and configurations of objects in the observable sky. It therefore improves understanding of the surroundings of the solar system in terms of observer-neutralcelestial coordinate systems—systems that are neithergeocentricnorheliocentric—such as thegalactic coordinate systemandsupergalactic coordinate system.

The Digital Universe Atlas has spun off a commercial-grade planetarium platform from SCISS calledUniviewthat was featured in the White House star party on October 7, 2009. The Atlas database and Partiview interface is compatible with professional planetarium software such as Evans & Sutherland'sDigistarand Sky-Skan'sDigitalSky2.

The Digital Universe is now a critical component of the OpenSpace open source interactive data visualization software suite.[1]In 2014, a NASA grant (supported by the NASA Science Mission Directorate in response to NASA Cooperative Agreement Number (CAN) NNH15ZDA004C, Amendment 1) was awarded to the American Museum of Natural History[2]for the development of the OpenSpace project, to utilize the latest data visualization techniques and graphics card technologies for rapid data throughput. OpenSpace and its Digital Universe datasets work on all operating systems and is available for free download.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^"49th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 2018 (LPI Contrib. No. 2083)"(PDF).Lunar And Planetary Science Conference.Retrieved9 May2019.
  2. ^"SMD Science Education Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN) NNH15ZDA004C, Amended".NASA Science Mission Directorate.Retrieved9 May2019.

External links[edit]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Digital_Universe_Atlas&oldid=1204611279"