Home Page       Tue Sep 2 14:15:44 JST 1997

Overview

The PIXY system aims to set up that anyone can examine their images and check whether new objects are in them, which is one of the purpose of the MISAO project. Definitely, with the image and some additional information, the system compares it with a star catalog and replies the data of every star in the image, a list of known objects like comets and candidates of new objects which are not in the catalog.

The architecture of the PIXY system is as Figure 1 shows.

  
Figure 1: System architecture

This system is used via WWW. The user accesses with an applet in a specific WWW page or a special software. First of all, the user has to input the image itself and some additional information: date and time, approximate direction, and approximate width of the image.

The system detect stars from the image at first. Next, it extracts stars in the neiborhood from a catalog depending on the input approximate direction. Then it matches detected stars and those in a catalog. After each detected star corresponds to that in a catalog, the system lists up known objects which should be in the image. Finally it finds out detected objects which are not in a catalog and not in the list of known objects or much differs from those in a catalog, and reports them as candidates of new objects. When the database is completed, the user becomes able to search images in the same direction or register the image.

Each software in the system is made as an individual componet and the whole system is a set of those components. I will make all components by my self for the prototype system. But the specifications will be in public and the system will have flexibility that user can improve or create a componet software and register it to the system. I mean, not only the sky surver but the constructing of the system itself should be also a collaboration.