A simple tool of visualizing 3-D datacubes in FITS format

The visualization is implemented by MayaVI and the interface is made with TraitsUI. It stems from my homework for the ay201b course.

Denpendencies

• Mayavi,
• pyface,
• Traits,
• TraitsUI,
• astropy,
• numpy,
• scipy,
• (optional) ImageMagick to make GIF movies.

Versions

Now it is full compatible with Python 3 (using TDViz3.py). The old file (TDViz.py) may still work with Python 2 but is not guaranteed.

I tested it with the following environment and everything works well:

• Python==3.7.3
• mayavi==4.6.2
• pyface==6.0.0
• traits==5.1.1
• traitsui==6.0.0
• astropy==3.1.2
• numpy==1.16.3
• scipy==1.2.1

Render P-P-V cubes with three options

1. Iso-surfaces colored by velocities.
2. Iso-surfaces colored by intensities.
3. Scattered dots colored by intensities.

The first two can be saved in a 'mesh' file and be imported to softwares such as Blender or Meshlab, and be uploaded to Sketchfab.

Known issues

1. Cannot load a different fits file if the current file name includes path: have to delete the current 'fitsfile' name, then nagivate to the new fits file.
2. In Mac OS 10.15 (Catalina), you may find an incomplete manual panel and a blank scene window. It may be solved by installing PyQt5:

pip install PyQt5
pip install PyQt5-sip

Thanks to Zhiyu Zhang for pointing this out!