aflak: Pluggable Visual Programming Environment with Quick Feedback Loop Tuned for Multi-Spectral Astrophysical Observations

Abstract

With the improvements of telescopes and proliferation of sky surveys, there is always more astrophysical data to analyze, but not so many astronomers. We present aflak, a visualization environment to analyze astronomical datasets. This paper’s contribution lies in that we leverage visual programming techniques to conduct fine-grained astronomical transformations, filtering and visual analyses on multi-spectral datasets, with the possibility for astronomers to interactively fine-tune all the interacting parameters. As the visual program is gradually designed, the computed results can be visualized in real time, thus aflak puts the astronomer in the loop, while managing data provenance at the same time.