Blazars are celestial bodies of high interest to astronomers. In particular, through the analysis of photometric and polarimetric observations of blazars, astronomers aim to understand the physics of the blazar's relativistic jet. However, it is challenging to recognize correlations and time variations of the observed polarization, intensity, and color of the emitted light. In our prior study, we proposed TimeTubes to visualize a blazar dataset as a 3D volumetric tube. In this paper, we build primarily on the TimeTubes representation of blazar datasets to present a new visual analytics environment named TimeTubesX, into which we have integrated sophisticated feature and pattern detection techniques for effective location of observable and recurring time variation patterns in long-term, multi-dimensional datasets. Automatic feature extraction detects time intervals corresponding to well-known blazar behaviors. Dynamic visual querying allows users to search long-term observations for time intervals similar to a time interval of interest (query-by-example) or a sketch of temporal patterns (query-by-sketch). Users are also allowed to build up another visual query guided by the time interval of interest found in the previous process and refine the results. We demonstrate how TimeTubesX has been used successfully by domain experts for the detailed analysis of blazar datasets and report on the results.

中文翻译：

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TimeTubesX：对耀变体的可观察、光度和极化行为的查询驱动的视觉探索

耀变体是天文学家高度关注的天体。特别是，通过分析耀变体的光度和偏振观测，天文学家旨在了解耀变体相对论射流的物理特性。然而，识别所观察到的偏振、强度和发射光颜色的相关性和时间变化具有挑战性。在我们之前的研究中，我们提出了 TimeTubes 将 blazar 数据集可视化为 3D 体积管。在本文中，我们主要基于 blazar 数据集的 TimeTubes 表示来呈现一个名为 TimeTubesX 的新可视化分析环境，我们在其中集成了复杂的特征和模式检测技术，以长期有效地定位可观察和重复的时间变化模式，多维数据集。自动特征提取检测与众所周知的 blazar 行为相对应的时间间隔。动态视觉查询允许用户搜索类似于感兴趣的时间间隔（按示例查询）或时间模式草图（按草图查询）的时间间隔的长期观察。用户还可以根据在前一个过程中找到的感兴趣的时间间隔来构建另一个可视化查询并细化结果。我们展示了领域专家如何成功使用 TimeTubesX 对 blazar 数据集进行详细分析并报告结果。用户还可以根据在前一个过程中找到的感兴趣的时间间隔来构建另一个可视化查询并细化结果。我们展示了领域专家如何成功使用 TimeTubesX 对 blazar 数据集进行详细分析并报告结果。用户还可以根据在前一个过程中找到的感兴趣的时间间隔来构建另一个可视化查询并细化结果。我们展示了领域专家如何成功使用 TimeTubesX 对 blazar 数据集进行详细分析并报告结果。