Taylor diagram

A Taylor diagram is a plot that shows the similarities of different models with respect to a given data set (correlation and RMS). It seems to be mostly used for climate models, but I've never seen it in action in astronomy fields.

I made a python/numpy/matplotlib implementation, which was then used by Michael Rawlins (from Univ. Massachusetts) to produce plots to be published in Rawlins et al., 2012. Assessment of regional climate model simulation estimates over the Northeast U.S., Journal of Geophysical Research (in review).

N.B.: do not trust this illustration for (geo)scientific purposes, but refer directly to the published version of the plot if needed.

Encode intensity vector in an HSL image

I wanted to mimic emission and absorption spectra of gas lamps. One solution is to encode the spectrum intensity into a specific color component of a simple "rainbow" image, e.g.:

• the luminance component of the HLS color system for an emission spectrum,
• the value component of the HSV color system for a transmission spectrum.

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The following Gist is an example in python/numpy/matplotlib, using standard module colorsys for color system conversion.