FRELLED : An Astronomical Data Visualisation Package for Blender
I present FRELLED, the FITS Realtime Explorer of Low Latency in Every Dimension. This is a data visualisation package specifically designed for examining 3D FITS files, primarily (but not exclusively) intended for HI and higher-frequency radio data sets such as those from ALMA. It provides a number of different visualisation techniques to maximise the scientific returns from the data. Users can view their data volumetrically, as isosurfaces, or as a traditional series of 2D images with the option to use displacement maps, or even in virtual reality. The display can be rapidly toggled between different viewing methods. Multi-volume rendering is possible, both by overlaying two volumetric data sets directly, or plotting contours or isosurfaces from an unlimited number of data cubes over one volumetric display. FRELLED incorporates tools to allow rapid visual cataloguing of data sets of up to 1500^3 voxels, as well as performing basic analysis tasks : comparing their data with the SDSS, querying NED, plotting integrated flux and velocity maps, and measuring the spectral features of the data. Users can create different virtual objects to mask and catalogue data, interactively rescaling and positioning them and using different colours to indicate different object types. These objects can be exported either to produce simple catalogues or for direct processing of the data. In an era where automatic techniques are increasingly dominant, I will demonstrate that the correct cools can still ensure that visual examination can still play an important role even in cataloguing large data sets.