Fractal Dimension of Galaxies


A Java program to calculate the Fractal Dimension of Galaxies. This program reads the galaxy from a gif file and then calculates the fractal dimension for the contour of an isophot of a particular intensity.

The fractal dimension is a measure of how space filling the contour is. Any curve in two dimensional space must have a fractal dimension of between 0 and 2. A point has fractal dimension 0 a line fractal dimension 1 and a curve which fills all space fractal dimension 2. The coast of Britian has a fractal dimension of about 1.31.

Slide the bar to select the intensity contour for which you want to calculate the fractal dimension.

( source)