Gnuastro: visualizing the full dynamic range in color images
This addresses a visualization problem for astronomers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing tools.
The authors tackled the challenge of visualizing the full dynamic range in multi-wavelength astronomical color images by introducing a non-linear transformation in Gnuastro v0.22, enabling simultaneous display of bright and faint features.
Color plays a crucial role in the visualization, interpretation, and analysis of multi-wavelength astronomical images. However, generating color images that accurately represent the full dynamic range of astronomical sources is challenging. In response, Gnuastro v0.22 introduces the program 'astscript-color-faint-gray', which is extensively documented in the Gnuastro manual. It employs a non-linear transformation to assign an 8-bit RGB (Red-Green-Blue) value to brighter pixels, while the fainter ones are shown in an inverse grayscale. This approach enables the simultaneous visualization of low surface brightness features within the same image. This research note is reproducible with Maneage, on the Git commit 48f5408.