The NOAO-time is a proto-type visualization tool to help users find when data available through VO-compliant and publicly available archives were taken. 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 current month and a yearly timeline dating back to January, 2004. The green colored day is the current day.
A timeline (dating back to January 2004 in this example) is present. Under each month is a number indicating the number of available data products from the archives cached by the NOAO Portal (NSA,SDSS,CNOC,XMM,HST,CHANDRA).

The NOAO-time contains multiple controls. We describe each of them below.

The NOAO-time is interactive. You can click on any day in the calendar or in any month in the timeline to go directly to that day. You can click the timeline arrows to go back in time or forward up to the current date. You can click directly on archives that appear in any given day to display the available data products.

Notice the square box directly under the timeline.

This box indicates the RA/Dec range from the sky within which your are viewing the calendar and timeline. Only data products within this RA/Dec range are shown. If you were at ZOOM=1 on the NOAO-Sky, the range should be 0-360 in RA (degrees) and -90 to 90 in Declination (degrees).
Please make sure that the NOAO-Sky Persistence is turned on. This is done by making sure the check-box is on next to Sky in the upper-left corner (notice the smaller yellow translucent circle).

The timeline control (at the position of the translucent yellow circle) allows users to choose years and months within which to find data. The red month is that which the user is currently examining.

For instance, in this example I used the mouse to click on March, 2004.

After a few moments, the calendar will update to that month and display archives which contain data during the days of March 2004.
CAUTION: If no data appears in the timeline you will need to use the arrows to go back in time a few years in order to find out when data was last taken.

The archive control allows users to specify which of the archives they would like to focus on.

Click the “check box” next to an image archive to turn on/off an archive. Then click the “Go” button (the upper yellow translucent circle).
Your calendar should automatically update and show just the data that month from that archive in March, 2004. Note that the timeline is also updated to show just those months when data from that archive were taken (the second lower yellow translucent circle).
Note that the calendar month shows data for only one day by one archive in this example (the lowest yellow translucent circle).

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).
CAUTION: Don't forget that a positional constraint has been applied as specified in the coordinate box located just below the timeline.

The year/month-select control (at the position of the translucent yellow circle) allows users to specify a specific year and month to view.

Type in a year and month in the following format: YYYY/MM (e.g., 2003/07).
Choose the archives you would like to see via their “check boxes”.
Click the “Go” button.

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).

CAUTION: Don't forget that a positional constraint has been applied as specified in the coordinate box located just below the timeline.

The archive/day select control allows users to display in a list data from a specific archive on a specific day/month/year.

Make sure you have chosen a month in which data exists (recall, the number of data products in any given month is noted in the timeline).
Click your mouse on an archive (e.g., HST, CHANDRA, SDSS) or survey (e.g., ndwfs -- The NOAO Deep Wide Field Survey, etc).
You should see a list of data products appear below the calendar. You may have to scroll down to see the list (read below).

In this view, the SDSS archive has been selected by clicking on the SDSS data on a given day/month/year. This list appears below and the browser was scrolled down.

There are lots of data available from this archive on this month. The list is paginated.
The list columns allow users to

“Add” data to a cart for access and/or analysis.
Download a datafile directly to your desktop
View the RA/Dec of the center of the image, the archive name, the filter, the seeing, and photometric depth, the telescope, etc. If any of these values are not provided by te individual archives an estimated value or a default (-999) is displayed.

The columns can be clicked to sort on that specific column.

Many of column headings have mouse-overs to describe what data they contain.