Introduction

ViewCube [+SoniCube] is a lightweight, standalone application written entirely in Python, designed for the efficient exploration and browsing of datacubes. Originally developed for the quick assessment of the quality and physical characteristics of datacubes from the CALIFA survey, and for the rapid exploration of high-level data products generated by the PyCASSO pipeline (de Amorim et al. 2017), ViewCube’s functionality has since expanded.

The application supports datacubes from (almost) any provenance, thanks to its general and flexible FITS reader. This reader is agnostic to the source of the datacubes, enabling it to handle a wide variety of datacubes from different instruments (e.g., MUSE) and surveys (e.g., MaNGA, CALIFA) across various wavelength ranges (optical, radio).

Furthermore, ViewCube can visualize Raw Stacked Spectra (RSS) if a fiber position table is provided, either specifying the HDU extension of a FITS file or in an external ASCII file.

In addition to offering intuitive visualization and interaction with datacubes and RSS files, the platform features a Sonicube interface. This unique capability enables auditory exploration through sonification, providing a novel dimension to data analysis.

Installation

To get started with ViewCube, simply install it via pip using the following command:

pip install viewcube

For more information, visit the ViewCube PyPI page.

To check the site-packages directory for a non-local Python installation, type the following command in the command line:

python -m site

Alternatively, if you want to see only the site-packages directory:

python -c "import site; print(site.getsitepackages())"

The installation should have placed the executable “ViewCube” file in your $PATH directory, making it accesible form any path.

You can check the actual location of the scrip via:

which ViewCube

Config file

For ViewCube to function, it requires a configuration file. The program searches for the file in the following order:

  1. Home Directory: A hidden file named .viewcuberc in the user’s home directory:

    $HOME/.viewcuberc

  2. Current Directory: A non-hidden file named viewcuberc in the directory where ViewCube is executed.

If both files are found, the non-hidden file in the current directory takes precedence over the hidden file in the home directory.

Generating a Configuration File

If no configuration file exists or if you wish to create a new one, you can generate a default file by running:

ViewCube --config-file

  • If `$HOME/.viewcuberc` does not exist: The command will create a hidden .viewcuberc file in your home directory.

  • If `$HOME/.viewcuberc` exists: The command will instead create a non-hidden viewcuberc file in the current directory.

Once generated, uncomment the relevant variables in the file and set them to your desired values.

How to cite this package

If you use this package in your research—whether for visualization, sonification, or both—please cite it by including as much of the following information as possible:

Adrián García Riber, Rubén García-Benito, Francisco Serradilla. Interactive multimodal integral field spectroscopy, RAS Techniques and Instruments, Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2024, Pages 748-758 https://doi.org/10.1093/rasti/rzae049