Opticks is a remote sensing application that supports

imagery Imagery is visual symbolism, or figurative language that evokes a mental image or other kinds of sense impressions, especially in a literary work, but also in other activities such as psychotherapy. Forms There are five major types of sensory im ...

, video (motion imagery),

synthetic aperture radar Synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) is a form of radar that is used to create two-dimensional images or three-dimensional reconstructions of objects, such as landscapes. SAR uses the motion of the radar antenna over a target region to provide fine ...

(SAR), multi-spectral, hyper-spectral, and other types of

remote sensing Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring information about Ear ...

data. Opticks supports processing remote sensing video in the same manner as it supports imagery, which differentiates it from other remote sensing applications. Opticks was initially developed by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. and other organizations for the

United States Intelligence Community United may refer to: Places * United, Pennsylvania, an unincorporated community * United, West Virginia, an unincorporated community Arts and entertainment Films * United (2003 film), ''United'' (2003 film), a Norwegian film * United (2011 film) ...

. Ball Aerospace open sourced Opticks hoping to increase the demand for remote sensing data and broaden the features available in existing remote sensing software. The Opticks software and its extensions are developed by over twenty different organizations, and over two hundred users are registered users at http://opticks.org. Future planned enhancements include adding the ability to ingest and visualize lidar data, as well as a three-dimensional (3-D) visualization capability. Opticks can also be used as a remote sensing software development framework. Developers can extend Opticks functionality using its

plug-in Plug-in, plug in or plugin may refer to: * Plug-in (computing) is a software component that adds a specific feature to an existing computer program. ** Audio plug-in, adds audio signal processing features ** Photoshop plugin, a piece of softwar ...

architecture and public application programming interface (API). Opticks is open source, licensed under

GNU Lesser General Public License The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

(LGPL) 2.1. Opticks was brought into the open source community in Dec 2007 and has a large developer community. For more information, se
the history of Opticks

Desktop Application

Opticks can be used as a standard

desktop application A desktop traditionally refers to: * The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor) Desktop may refer to various comp ...

. The

vanilla software In computer science, vanilla is the term used to refer when computer software and sometimes also other computing-related systems like computer hardware or algorithms are not customized from their original form, i.e., they are used without any ...

can be used to read and write imagery in several formats and for some basic data analysis as described in th
Opticks Feature Tour
The Opticks community provide
installation packages
for Microsoft Windows, Solaris 10

SPARC SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Its design was strongly influenced by the experimental Berkeley RISC system developed ...

, and some distributions of

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

Software Framework

Opticks can also be used as a software development framework. The Opticks community provides and supports a public SDK which includes a documented API as well as several extension tutorials. The Opticks website hosts
variety of extensions
some of which are developed and maintained by the same development team as Opticks.

Community

Opticks has active

mailing lists A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is re ...

br>here
and an

IRC Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for Many-to-many, group communication in discussion forums, called ''#Channels, channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via instant messa ...

channel availabl
here
The issue tracker is availabl
here
The

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comment (computer programming), comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a Computer program, p ...

is availabl
here
Opticks ha
applied
for incubation with the OSGeo foundation. Opticks has participated in both the

Google Summer of Code The Google Summer of Code, often abbreviated to GSoC, is an international annual program in which Google awards stipends to contributors who successfully complete a free and open-source software coding project during the summer. , the program is ...

and

ESA , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (1 ...

Summer of Code in Space programs.

Google Summer of Code

GSoC 2010

Opticks participated in GSoC 2010 with two students. The titles of the accepted projects were "Adding Image Stack Support and New Algorithm Plugin for Opticks" and "Speckle removal and edge detection tool for SAR image". Extensions for the projects are availabl
here
an
here

GSoC 2011

Opticks participated in GSoC 2011 under the

OSGeo The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), is a non-profit non-governmental organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation was formed in February 200 ...

organization with three students. The titles of the accepted projects were "Photography processing tools for Opticks", "Development of a ship detection and classification toolkit for SAR imagery in Opticks", and "Astronomical processing tools for Opticks. Extensions for the projects are availabl
herehere
an
here

GSoC 2012

Visit the current ideas page on th
Opticks Website

European Space Agency Summer of Code in Space

ESA SOCIS 2011

Opticks participated in ESA SOCIS in 2011. The project page can be found on th
Opticks website

ESA SOCIS 2012