Today, we are launching a web-based companion application to the Jovian Vortex Hunter project: https://jude.zooniverse.org. JuDE is an app to explore the subject metadata associated with the Zooniverse project, and has two main aspects:
The Subject page
The primary purpose of the subject page is to get more context about a subject. Given the small size of the images, sometimes it’s useful to see what sort of features are present around a given subject, in order to either do better classifications or have more engaging discussions on Talk. For this reason, JuDE allows you to open up a subject-specific page, which shows more details on the subject, as well as an expanded view of the surrounding area on Jupiter.
What can I do in the subject page?
The subject page has three main components:
- On the left panel, you will see the subject image as seen during classification, followed by the associated metadata. The metadata for subject in the Jovian Vortex Hunter project is the location (latitude/longitude and which perijove pass the image was taken in)
- Below this, there is a map showing the mosaic of all images from this perijove, and the location of this subject.
- On the right, you will see an interactive window which shows a small segment of this mosaic, centered on the subject. The black outline shows the edge of the subject on the mosaic (note that this outline will be very curved near the polar regions, since the physical spacing between longitude lines will shrink).
On the interactive window, the panel on the top right will show a selection of tools that can be used to interact with the mosaic. You can use the zoom tool to zoom into a specific region, or the pan tool to move around. If you would like to share this mosaic on Talk, you can click the first option (camera icon) to download the image and share it with Talk (note that you will need to use an image upload service, like Imgur to get a link to the image).
What do I get from the subject page?
The subject page is meant to show more information about what’s happening in the image (either during classification or when discussing the subject on Talk). For example, if you think there is a vortex in this image, but it’s out of the frame, you can access the corresponding subject page and see if what you thought was indeed a vortex. Or, if you cannot see whether a feature is a brown barge or a cloud band, then the expanded view will show you which one it is!
If you do use JuDE for discussions on Talk, please post the URL of the subject in your comment, so that others can quickly access the same information.
How do I access the subject page?
The subject page has a unique URL for each subject. This can be accessed from the subject metadata when doing classification (by clicking the i below a subject). Or, if you know the Subject ID (from the Talk board, for example), you can access the subject page by going to https://jude.zooniverse.org/subject/subject_id where you enter the Subject ID in place of subject_id!
The exploration page
The idea behind the exploration page is to analyze distributions of features. If you look an image of Jupiter, you can see that there is a stark distribution in the color and shapes of features with location. Equatorial regions are generally redder, while polar regions are more white/blue in JunoCam images. With JuDE’s exploration tool, you can plot the distribution of the metadata variables for each subject on the Jovian Vortex Hunter project (latitude/longitude of the subject and the perijove pass during which the image was taken), and analyze how distributions in these variables lead to different atmospheric features!
How do we do this?
The exploration tool has multiple elements in it. To describe these elements, please view this overview video:
The primary purpose of the exploration page is to help you plot different distributions of the data and analyze how the distribution of the metadata variables lead to differences in atmospheric features. For example, here is a distribution of vortices by latitude. Note how moving from the equator to the poles affects the color of the clouds:
How do I access the exploration page?
You can access the exploration page by going to https://jude.zooniverse.org/explore/, or by clicking the “explore data” link in the top right of the JuDE page.
What do I do if I find something interesting?
If you find a set of subjects that are interesting, please click “export subjects”, which will download the set of selected subjects as a CSV file. You can open this file using any spreadsheet software (e.g., Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets). Here’s an example of what this file looks like:
The columns correspond to:
- subject_id: this is the ID of the subject on Zooniverse. This is the same ID as the one in the titles of the “Notes” Talk board and also can be viewed on the Subject Page of JuDE.
- latitude: this is the latitude of the center of subject on Jupiter
- longitude: this is the longitude of the center of the subject on Jupiter
- perijove: this is the Juno perijove pass when the image was taken
- location: this is the public URL on Zooniverse that points to the subject image. You can directly access this URL to get the image, or you can go to the corresponding subject page on JuDE.
- classification_count: the current number of classifications done by volunteers on this subject
- retired_at: if the subject was retired, this will give you the time at which it was retired from the project
- retirement_reason: gives the reason for the subject retirement. Usually this is “classification_count“, i.e. the subject hit 7 classifications to be retired as a vortex, or 10 classifications to be retired as something else.
You can bring this file and the list of subjects to the Talk board to discuss these interesting features in more detail! Note that Zooniverse does not support file upload, so if you want to share the file on Talk, you will need to upload and host it somewhere (e.g., Google Drive).
Have feedback? Let us know
Since this is a new app, we want to know how you are using it. Please submit feedback by clicking on the survey link on the top banner. Additionally, if you are facing issues with the tool, please check out the JuDE Talk board. We’re very excited to see how you will use this new tool. If you find anything of interesting, please do bring it to the Talk boards, where we can have much more elaborate discussions on these features!
As always, a huge thanks to all the volunteers who are participating in this project! We are very close to finishing the first workflow (Is there a Vortex), and we will transition fully to the second workflow (Circle the Vortex).
Jovian Vortex Hunter 