00 Vision¶
If you only read one page after the README: the Atlas is a map of observation systems, not a ranking of technologies. Use it to compare how observation works, not which tool wins.
Atlas concept¶
An observer is anything that selects part of a phenomenon and turns it into a storable signal:
- a sensing organism (eye, retina, echolocation)
- an optical assembly (lens, telescope, GRIN cell)
- a laboratory detector (SEM, spectrometer, particle counter)
- a computational camera (raster, ray tracer, field-transport integrator)
- an educational or interpretive view (orbital diagram, curvature field sketch)
The Atlas records what each observer receives, transforms, measures, and presents — and where claims must stop.
The Atlas Constitution governs this page and every Atlas entry. Its Observer Grammar and Representation Grammar provide the shared descriptive structure.
Questions every territory answers¶
Whether the observer is biological, optical, scientific, computational, or educational, the Atlas asks:
- What phenomenon reaches the observer?
- What receiver or detector responds?
- Which transformations occur before measurement?
- What units, ranges, and channels describe the output?
- Which artifacts preserve the observation and its provenance?
- Which claims are supported, blocked, or outside scope?
Protocol and map¶
Project Glowing Heart is this repository's protocol, artifact, and measurement program — preview contracts for fixtures, observers, snapshot channels, artifacts, and future difference packets.
The Observation Atlas is the broader map: observer families that inform those contracts and keep terminology honest across domains.
The map is descriptive and revisioned. It does not merge perception, lab instrumentation, rendering, and simulation into a single "ground truth." The Atlas does not duplicate Glowing Heart milestones. See Relationship to Project Glowing Heart.
Reading boundary¶
This page follows the Atlas reading boundary.