Visualization, exploration, and data analysis of complex astrophysical data

In this paper, we show how advanced visualization tools can help the researcher in investigating and extracting information from data. The focus is on VisIVO, a novel open-source graphics application that blends high-performance multidimensional visualization techniques and up-to-date technologies to cooperate with other applications and to access remote, distributed data archives. VisIVO supports the standards defined by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance in order to make it interoperable with VO data repositories. The paper describes the basic technical details and features of the software, and it dedicates a large section to show how VisIVO can be used in several scientific cases.