Analogous to filters for magnitude and angular scale, an astrophysical type filter (and input control) would key on metadata for catalogs and objects in them so that a user can trigger display of all phenomena of a type across all catalog layers (that have been enabled).
Historic and relevant examples of mixed astrophysical type catalogs include Cederblad, Messier and Lynds Bright Nebulae.
Over time, astrophotography, science and technology have specialized catalogs of objects defined by astrophysical characteristics. Historic and relevant examples include Sharpless 2, intended to include HII regions based on visual inspection of high resolution image plates, later refined and narrowed by Marsalkov, BFS and others to exclude items that turned out through astrophysical analysis to be primarily or entirely different types of objects, such as planetary and reflection nebulae.
Stars were historically classified by apparent magnitude, now by spectral type, absolute magnitude and advanced astrophysical measurements.
As a PixInsight user and astrophotographer, I am working in optical astrophysical phenomena, obviously, though one may wish to annotate non-optical phenomena or information optically (such as which way is north or the location of optically invisible radio phenomena).
Optical Astrophysical catalog types filter list draft
- Molecular cloud (diffuse)
- Molecular cloud (compact, dark)
- H II region (includes OIII, SII, etc)
- Reflection nebula (stellar)
- Reflection nebula (galactic)
- Planetary nebula
- Supernova remnant
- Wolf-Rayet bubble
- Pulsar Wind nebula
For stars, separately, similar idea would be tagging stars belonging to known OB associations in the Milky Way so they could be indicated altogether in an image.
Currently these effects are achievable in annotations but can be laborious to produce and it is the catalog sources themselves that would need enhancing with some additional metadata.
Analogous to filters for magnitude and angular scale, an astrophysical type filter (and input control) would key on metadata for catalogs and objects in them so that a user can trigger display of all phenomena of a type across all catalog layers (that have been enabled).
Historic and relevant examples of mixed astrophysical type catalogs include Cederblad, Messier and Lynds Bright Nebulae.
Over time, astrophotography, science and technology have specialized catalogs of objects defined by astrophysical characteristics. Historic and relevant examples include Sharpless 2, intended to include HII regions based on visual inspection of high resolution image plates, later refined and narrowed by Marsalkov, BFS and others to exclude items that turned out through astrophysical analysis to be primarily or entirely different types of objects, such as planetary and reflection nebulae.
Stars were historically classified by apparent magnitude, now by spectral type, absolute magnitude and advanced astrophysical measurements.
As a PixInsight user and astrophotographer, I am working in optical astrophysical phenomena, obviously, though one may wish to annotate non-optical phenomena or information optically (such as which way is north or the location of optically invisible radio phenomena).
Optical Astrophysical catalog types filter list draft
For stars, separately, similar idea would be tagging stars belonging to known OB associations in the Milky Way so they could be indicated altogether in an image.
Currently these effects are achievable in annotations but can be laborious to produce and it is the catalog sources themselves that would need enhancing with some additional metadata.