The HEALPix Primer

HEALPix is a Hierarchical, Equal Area, and iso-Latitude Pixelisation of the sphere designed to support efficiently (1) local operations on the pixel set, (2) a hierarchical tree structure for multi-resolution applications, and (3) the global Fast Spherical Harmonic transform. HEALPix based mathematical software meets the challenges which future high resolution and large volume CMB data sets, including the WMAP and Planck mission products, will present.