Oleg M. Smirnov (Institute of Astronomy, Russian Academy of Sciences)
DASHA-2 is a new version of the DASHA package (Smirnov & Ipatov, ADASS IV), completely rewritten under IDL. The package provides functionality for visualization of photometric data (such as photometric tables produced by DAOPHOT II), as well as filtering, calibration, cross-identification and compilation of per-frame measurements (for a series of observations of the same field) into one composite color - magnitude table.
The demonstration focuses on a set of foundation classes, written in IDL, for manipulation and visualization of data tables. Each table is encapsulated into an IDL object, which provides the user with an interactive display window. The display object may be manipulated by the user to produce arbitrary plots, diagrams and histograms of the data in the table, and features tools for filtering the data by directly selecting plot regions on-screen. When employed in a software package such as DASHA-2, the display objects provide user feedback; for example, calibration standards can be selected by the user directly on the display, with their identifiers being reported back to the application. From the user's point of view, the display object is in essense the data; by providing interactive on-the-fly visualization capabilities independently of the calling application, such objects vastly improve user effectiveness, as demonstrated by the DASHA-2 package.