A pipeline for downloading and modifying WiseView style unWISE flipbook images. Designed for the [Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors project] (Final Link here).
Flipbooks is a python package is built to use the WiseView API in order to extract image blinks of Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) coadds, better known as the unWISE catalogue. Using a default dictionary, as formatted by the WiseView API, users of flipbooks can change the values of various important parameters (see "Setting Parameters") which will be sent to WiseView. WiseView will use these parameters to interpret and generate a set of images on your local machine, otherwise known as a flipbook.
Make sure Python 3.9 and above is installed on your local machine, then use python to install flipbooks via a GitHub pip install in the command line:
pip install git+https://github.com/coolneighbors/flipbooks.git
If you are trying to modify flipbooks, or you just want to have an easily accessible local version, you can download flipbooks directly from GitHub.
Upon initialization of flipbooks, a local environment variable of PATH_TO_FLIPBOOKS is set with the working directory of your flipbooks repository.
As of version 1.5, flipbooks requires the following packages:
requests, PILLOW, imageio, matplotlib
The primary file in flipbooks is wv.py (shorthand for WiseView). Most of the primary functionality associated with flipbooks can be found there.
As such, lets learn how to use the WiseView API's parameter dictionary.
There's two ways to generate a WiseView parameter dictionary:
default_params()
Get a default dictionary of WiseView API parameters.
custom_params(**kwargs):
Provides a customized dictionary of WiseView API query parameters based on the provided keyword arguments.
All unchanged parameters are set to their default values in default_params.
The most important parameters to consider are:
ra: Right Ascension of the center of the images (float)
dec: Declination of the center of the images (float)
band: Which bands of WISE should be used, W1 is 1, W2 is 2, W1+W2 is 3. (int)
size: FOV of the image in arcseconds (float)
minbright: minimum brightness of the image (exact functionality not known yet) (float)
maxbright: maximum brightness of the image (exact functionality not known yet) (float)
Here is an example of how you would set your own parameters:
wise_view_parameters = wv.custom_params(ra=133.786245, dec=-7.244372, band=3, size=128, minbright=-50.0, maxbright=500.0)
For the full list of parameters, check the default_params function in wv.py.
Inside wv.py, there are two ways to generate a flipbook:
- Generate a GIF
- Generate a set of PNG images
For GIF generation, there are two ways of doing so:
- Use the wv.py one_wv_animation function directly
wise_view_parameters : dict
WiseView API query parameters for requested sky location and image stretch. Can be provided by
default_params or custom_params.
outdir : str
Output directory of the image frames.
gifname : str
Output path filename for the GIF animation.
duration : float, optional
Time interval in seconds for each frame in the GIF.
scale_factor : float, optional
Frame image size scaling factor.
delete_pngs : bool, optional
Delete downloaded PNGs after having used them to construct the GIF.
- Run the one_wiseview_gif.py script
How to use one_wiseview_gif.py to generate a GIF flipbook:
python one_wiseview_gif.py --help
usage: one_wiseview_gif.py [-h] [--outdir OUTDIR] [--minbright MINBRIGHT] [--maxbright MAXBRIGHT] [--duration DURATION] [--keep_pngs] ra dec gifname
generate one WiseView style unWISE image blink
positional arguments:
ra RA in decimal degrees.
dec Dec in decimal degrees.
gifname Name of output GIF animation file.
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--outdir OUTDIR Output directory for PNGs.
--minbright MINBRIGHT
Image rendering stretch lower bound.
--maxbright MAXBRIGHT
image rendering stretch upper bound.
--duration DURATION Time in seconds per frame.
--keep_pngs Retain the PNGs after the GIF has been built?
Optional Usage:
Reading from CSV - In manifest.csv, put RA and DEC of objects in the RA and DEC column.
To do this, use CSVParser.py.
For PNG generation, there is essentially one way to do so:
- Use the wv.py png_set function directly
wise_view_parameters : dict
WiseView API query parameters for requested sky location and image stretch. Can be provided by
default_params or custom_params.
outdir : str
Output directory of the PNG files
scale_factor : float, optional
PNG image size scaling factor, use integer values to avoid pixel-value interpolation.
Uses Nearest-Neighbor algorithm.
addGrid : bool, optional
Boolean parameter which determines whether to overlay a grid on the PNG files
gridSize : float, optional
Number of pixels between each line in the grid.
Multiprocessing has been implemented for PNG generation but not GIF generation.
Developed by members of the Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors team
Aaron Meisner, Noah Schapera, Austin Humphreys
This work would not of been possible without the WiseView API and its creators.
Please cite Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors if you found flipbooks useful in your research.
Please also cite WiseView, since this package fundamentally requires its backend functionality. A Bibtex entry for WiseView can be obtained from NASA ADS.
Copyright (c) 2022 Noah Schapera, Austin Humphreys, Aaron Meisner
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
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