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Overview of the Graphical Interface

The Spatial Editor's graphical interface (Figure 8.1) uses libraries provided by the JSky project8.1 and is dominated by a window for displaying images (in FITS format). In addition to this, there are also smaller windows for displaying the entire image (including a yellow square which indicates which portion of the entire image is displayed in the main window; this can be moved with the mouse) and another that shows the zoomed part of the image that is centred on the cursor position in the main window. Display of these is optional. The colourbar at the very bottom of the image can be used to change the image contrast by dragging the mouse within it - the contrast can be reset to the default with a right-click.

Above the image display there is a toolbar that can be used for various operations including loading and saving images, manipulating source and target positions and for setting the intensity cut level in the display. Zooming controls and positional information are located directly below the image window.

Below the image display and its menu and control buttons, the FOV Parameters and Image Query panels are visible (Figure 8.2). The former displays the value of the Representative Frequency (taking into account the source velocity) and the antenna diameter that shall be used when displaying the antenna beamsize (field of view). Changing the source in the Forms Editor will change the Representative Frequency to the value appropriate to that source. The Image Query panel allows the image server and the size of the retrieved image to be specified.

A further feature of the graphical interface is the ability to measure the distance between two points within the image by right-clicking and dragging the mouse (Figure 8.1).

Figure 8.1: An example of the image display area on the Visual Spatial Editor. This shows a pointed mosaic observation of the outer reaches of NGC 253, the mosaic pointings having been automatically created based on a user-defined rectangle (green). The x-shaped cross at the centre marks the position of the coordinates given in the Forms Editor. As this is an observation that requires the ACA, also shown is the rectangular area (in blue) that will be mapped by the Total Power Array. Also shown is the ruler for measuring distances between points in the image.
Image SpatialEditorRuler

Figure 8.2: The FOV Parameters and Image Query panels in the Visual Spatial Editor.
Image SpatialEditor2


next up previous contents
Next: Creating a Field Definition Up: The Visual Spatial Editor Previous: The Visual Spatial Editor   Contents
The ALMA OT Team, 2017 Dec 18