This is an RGB image using the infrared bands of Wise 1, 2, and 3. These three images are of the same size, so it works on the astropy package I am using without having to install Montage. I made 3 red, 2 green, and 1 blue. As you can see from all that red smudge, WISE 3 is sort of hazier. You can’t actually see a brown dwarf very well from WISE 3 band, so I guess this helps.
Making Stars More Visible
June 20, 2014Before I begin, there is a previous post that I would like to comment on my previous post. Apparently what I did was not combine three images and create an RGB image based on them. What happened instead was I put WISE 1, J, and K on top of each other, so all you could see was WISE 1 on top. Bummer. In order to do that, I have to install Montage, otherwise the images won’t rescale and stuff to fit each other. Unfortunately, it looks like a Linux kind of thing. Oh well.
Moving on to greener pastures, I have been changing a value called vmin and vmax. It allows me to set up a scale of color or black to white that depends on how bright the pixel is. So, let’s use the grayscale here for simplicity. If the pixel is as bright as the vmax value, then that pixel is white. If it is as dim as the vmin value, that pixel is black. In between it is all shades of gray. So, what happens, say if you bring the value of vmax down? The dimmer objects become whiter because now the brightness is closer to the vmax boundary. See here:
As you can see above, the bright object is still white when you lower the vmax boundary, but the whiteness becomes wider, while the dimmer object becomes whiter because it is closer to the line. That way, you can make dim objects stand out. See here two pictures below, one before the change, and one after:
As you can see, it is much clearer that there is actually a thing shining right in the middle of the circle. I made the brown dwarf stand out.
In Which I Achieve Something
June 16, 2014I made a colored picture using J band of 2MASS (1.25 micrometer), K band of 2MASS (2.17 micrometer), and Wise 1 (3.4 micrometer). Basically, each band represents the different wavelengths in which the telescopes captured the images. So, I put them together using python and got:
Neat! I believe the faint dot in the middle is the brown dwarf here. Hopefully I got did it right.
I Learned Programming
March 27, 2013So, I recently learned the basics of programming due to Coursera. If you want the specifics, I learned Python. Using the template and assets the online class gave me, I made a basic shooting game, which you can check out here.
The controls are:
Space-shoot
Up-accelerate
Left/Right-turn around
Now, having tried out the game, I know what you are thinking. It sucks. Well, yes. First of all, I don’t know how to get around the ghosting effect of the keyboard because I am a noob at this. Second of all, if I had the time and energy, I would have added a bunch of stuff. The highest stuffs in my priority list would have been adding collisions to the rocks, increasing the difficulty as the game goes on, adding the explosion animation (which they were kind enough to give me, but didn’t take advantage of), and adding the start screen. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time or the energy, so this piece of software will remain a blot to all of humanity for all eternity.