Figures should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals and should be cited in the text by number (e.g., “see Figure 1”). Each figure must be mentioned at least once in the text, and in proper numerical order. In the final article, the placement of figures will be determined by their first mention in the text.
Figure legends should clearly and concisely label and explain figures and parts of figures. The first sentence of each figure legend should be a descriptive phrase, omitting the initial article (the, a, an). In multi-part figures, the legends should distinguish (a), (b), (c), etc., components of the figure. Note that if parts are identified in the legend as (a), (b), (c), particularly for single figures composed of multiple panels, these letters should be clearly labeled in the figure itself. Otherwise panels should be referred to by position (top right, top left, middle, bottom, etc.). All lines (solid, dashed, dot-dashed, dash-dotted, etc.) and symbols (filled or open circles, squares, triangles, crosses, arrows, etc.) should be explained in the legend. Graphics or glyphs should not be used in figure legends.
Figure sets are a way of displaying large numbers of figures without compromising the layout of the article. Authors utilize AASTeX markup to structure figure sets with titles and captions, and the figure sets appear in the HTML version of the final article as an interactive graphic. A truncated version of a figure set appears in the article’s final PDF version.
Authors may submit interactive, JavaScript driven graphics to appear in the HTML version of their final article. We support a limited set of Javascript libraries and require that the data behind these HTML/js figures be made available for download by readers. A static two two-dimensional version must be submitted with the HTML object for inclusion into the article’s final PDF version.