The NOAO-Sky is a proto-type visualization tool to help users find VO-compliant and publicly archived imaging data. At this point in time, please use only W3C compliant browsers (Mozilla, Firefox, Netscape). It is not yet functional in Internet Explorer or Safari.
The default
page shows the NOAO Science Archive and it's 12 individual surveys as a
different color (labels are shown as groups of three in each of the
four corners of the sky at the default zoom level 2).
A background grid shows the coordinate system (Hammer-Aitfoff).
A “depth map” is also shown underneath the coordinate grid (the gray-scale colors). This depth map utilizes all of the data available to the portal. The brighter pixels indicated regions with more observations than darker pixels.
The NOAO-Sky contains multiple control-centers. We describe each of them below.
The NOAO-Sky is interactive. You can click and hold your mouse button anywhere in the sky image to pan around. You can choose higher zoom levels using the zoom-bar in the top left of the viewer. You can double-click the mouse on a piece of the sky to find out what data is available at that point on the sky.
The
first control-center (at the position of the translucent yellow
circle) allows the user to mark your favorite locations on the sky
with a marker :
Simply enter a coordinate (RA/Dec) into the form boxes and click “Add”
The format for the entered coordinates is (TBD).
CAUTION: The red marker may not be clearly noticed on the sky when the NSA archive wire-frames are turned on (as they are also red).
The
second control center (at the position of the translucent yellow
circle) allows users to pan and zoom directly to some specifed
location.
For instance, type ngc6394 into the OBJ form box. Now click the “R” button to resolve the coordinates for this object (we use the Sesame web service name resolver).
After a few moments, the coordinate boxes RA/Dec should be filled in with the correct values.
Choose a zoom from the drop down menu. Then click the “Go”
button to have the NOAO-Sky pan and zoom directly to your specified
object.
The
third control-center allows users to decide which archive wire-frames
they would like to see on the NOAO-Sky.
Click the “check box” next to an image archive to turn on/off an archive.
Hover your mouse over the archive name for more information about the archive.
Click the archive link to go directly to that archive via your browser.
The default is to show the depth map (REPEATS) and the NSA (the NOAO Science Archive survey data).
Users can also select from SDSS-DR3, CNOC, HST, CHANDRA, and XMM
CAUTION: XMM,HST, and CHANDRA are “live”archives that are
continually being updated with new data. The wire-frames shown on this
prototype version of the NOAO-Sky were last updated 03/05/2005. A
scheduled update is planned for (TBD).
The
fourth control center (at the position of the translucent yellow
circle) allows users to specify which archives they would like to
search. A search is performed within the RA/Dec limits of the
NOAO-Sky viewer. Searches can only be done when the user has zoomed
to a level >= 5.
For example, use the zoom-bar (top left of the viewer) to zoom into the highest level (7).
Now, choose to search on NSA and SDSS by clicking the “check-boxes” next to those archives.
Now, click the “New Search Button”. You should see a list of image metadata below the control-centers.
You can turn that list on/off as well. Or, pan/zoom around a make a new search.
CAUTION: The RA/Dec range for the search is defined by the viewing window.
In
this view, the HST and XMM archives have been selected by clicking on
their check-boxes next to their archive names (see
the translucent
yellow circle.
The
columns can be clicked to sort on that specific column.
Many of column headings have mouse-overs to describe what data they contain.