Welcome to Jafar !
Standing for
Just Annotate Features for Astronomical Results,
Jafar is a user-friendly online annotation tool.
The aim is to enable people from the scientific community to easily identify and classify features in astronomical images.
More specifically, this website enables users to manually delineate the contours of the features of interest, superimposed on any background astronomical image.
This precise delineation will enable scientists to retrieve
quantitative measurements about them, such as geometry or luminosity.
As an example, Jafar has been used in several publications (Sola+2022, 2024 (submitted),
Marleau+2024) to annotate very faint, Low Surface Brightness (LSB) features
in deep images. Although Jafar can be used to annotate any type of features, it has been mostly used
for faint features as they are hard to identify automatically.
How does it work ?
The annotation process is straightforward and explained in more details in this tutorial. Briefly, the user draws the boundary of each feature of interest
as an overlay over the image to be annotated. Each drawn shape is then properly labeled to indicate
its type. Additional information can be reported using notes. Once finalized, the right ascension
and declination coordinates of the contours of the shapes and their associated labels are stored
into a database.
The visualization and navigation interface relies on Aladin Lite developed by
the CDS, and on initial developments made by F. Richards.
Which projects can Jafar be used for ?
Jafar is quite versatile, and it is possible to annotate any image related to galaxies, their environment and their substructures, with several convenient drawing tools.
Jafar can be used to create datasets of annotated features to train Deep Learning algorithms to automatically detect and segment stucture
Who are we ?
We are an international team of scientists and engineers working together to provide this unique
service to the astronomical community !
Our core team is based in several institutions such as the Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg
(FR, Pierre-Alain Duc, Olivier Marchal), the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge (UK, Elisabeth
Sola), the Université de Toulon (FR, Adeline Paiement), and Swansea University (UK, Felix Richards).
How can I get involved ?
If you would like to get involved in one of our projects, please ‘Sign up’ from the login button and send an email to Jafar project manager that specifies the reason why you would like to join the project.
