Displaying digital deep sky images

Emmanuel Bertin (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris)

Abstract

In Astronomy, many activities such as survey data quality visual control, crowd-sourced projects, atlas publishing and outreach initiatives require digital images of the deep sky to be displayed in a legible and consistent way for both professional and more general audiences. Important technical facts about display devices and standards are unfortunately unknown to most professional astronomers and the appearance of published images is often unsatisfactory as a result of a questionable trial-and-error approach.
In this talk I will discuss the main technical issues one faces when displaying astronomical images in various contexts. I will propose some guidelines as well as a software implementation to automate the process of providing consistent, ready-for-use pictures directly from science image data.

Paper ID: O08