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Interactive Research Figures in the Browser

Excerpt, not Export: Rich Interactive presentations and publications

Given glue's astronomical capabilities, many interactive figures used both in research and communication have been produced by exporting data sets that have been linked, explored, and visualized in the downloadable desktop (Qt) version of glue to Plotly (semi-automatically).
One of the goals of LIVE Astro is to unify the data exploration environment (e.g. glue in the browser as glupyter) with the presentation/publication environment, avoiding the need for export. So, in the fully-realized LIVE Astro environment, interactive figures could be a direct excerpt, rather than an export, from a researcher's work.

The Local Bubble (glue➞plotly)

Catherine Zucker (Zucker et al., Nature, 2022) and her colleagues used glue to contextualize the locations of the 3D positions and shapes of molecular gas (from Zucker et al., ApJ, 2021) near the Sun, to learn that ~all nearby star formation is taking place on the surface of the Local Bubble. A key interactive figure from Zucker's 2022 paper is shown below, with its caption from the companion Local Bubble "Visuals" page.

A 3D spatial view of the solar neighborhood. This interactive figure (direct link) supports interactive panning, zooming, and rotation. Individual data layers can be toggled on/off by clicking on the layer in the legend on the right side of the figure. The surface of the Local Bubble is shown in purple. The short squiggly colored lines (a.k.a. “skeletons”) demarcate the 3D spatial morphology of dense gas in prominent nearby molecular clouds. The 3D cones indicate the positions of young stellar clusters, with the apex of the cone pointing in the direction of stellar motion. The Sun is marked with a yellow cross. We also overlay the morphology of the 3D dust (gray blobby shapes) and the models for two Galactic scale features — the Radcliffe Wave (red) and the Split (blue). The Per-Tau Superbubble (green sphere, featured on this site for its augmented reality figure) is also overlaid.

LIVE Astro for the Public

Cosmic Data Stories

The Cosmic Data Stories project, funded by NASA's Science Activation program, uses glue, WWT, and other javascript tools to produce interactive data science learning experiences for students, teachers, and the public. The example here shows one of many Mini Data Stories, intended as quick experiences. To see a fuller, more javascript-intensive, example, try the full "Hubble Data Story."

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