Applications of Montage - Education and Public Outreach

Our customers have exploited the capabilities of Montage in generating scientific products, underpinning quality assurance of data products, deploying data access services, analyzing data, and in deriving educational and public outreach products.

Montage is valuable in E/PO activities because it supports uncommon projections, that are useful as backdrops in animation and projection. The IPAC Cool Cosmos project has generated all-sky maps in plate caree (rectangular) projection for the point sources in 2MASS, and for IRAS/COBE maps of interstellar emission (Schlegel, Finkbeiner and Davies 1998). The Adler Planetarium has incorporated these same images in their Explore Our Sky at Different Wavelengths exhibit. Visitors to the exhibit may navigate the sky with a Quicktime VR application.

3-color image of Rho Ophiuchi created from 12, 60 and 100 µm bands observed by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). Credit: IRAS/R. Hurt.

3-color image of the sky as seen by the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS), reconstructed from a catalog of measured brightnesses of half a billion stars from the survey. Credit: 2MASS/J. Carpenter, T. H. Jarrett, & R. Hurt.