ESASky User Forum / Whiteboard

Welcome to the ESASky user forum! The aim of this forum is to have a place to collect feature requests from users, allow conversations between users and gauge the Astronomy community's priorities related to the ESASky application. We welcome requests for the ESASky, its documentation, its ways of interacting with the community, and any functionality which you think would be widely useful to the Astronomy community.

Please suggest and vote on feature requests below. Before adding a new suggestion, use the search function to see if the idea has already been posted. Please include links to relevant repositories and existing issues in the description of the feature request. Also consider including links to code or images demonstrating the requested functionality.

You can also use this forum to report bugs or request small improvements to existing functionality.

Other places to get help and communicate with the ESASky team are:

The ESASky Project is dedicated to maintaining a positive, inclusive, successful, and growing community. Please observe the usual basic internet citizen rules before posting to this forum.

+1
Planned

Visualize the postcards on top of the backgroun image

Becky Brown 5 years ago updated by Belén López Martí 5 years ago 1

Hi again,

I have been trying to identify a super nova in ESA Sky and I cannot localize the archival images where the SN is because when I explore the browse products, they do not appear superimposedon the background image with the correct rotation but instead they appear as extra windows on top witha default orientation. Would it be possible to have the images appear on top of the background image with the correct rotation angle and size? That would make the exploration of imaging data actually possible on the interface, currently one just has to end downloading all the images and doing the work offline in ds9, which is not so great because then you loose the possibility of overplotting catalogues, publications, etc..

Do you think this would be possible?

+1
Fixed

Replace catalogue XMM-SUSS 2.1 by XMM-SUSS 4

Antonio Talavera 5 years ago updated by Deborah Baines 3 years ago 3
+1
Planned

Explore all publication data for single galaxy

Andreas Faisst 6 years ago updated by Fab 5 years ago 1

Hello,

I noticed that (mainly local) galaxies have publication assigned to single clumps or even stars. Currently, it is not possible to select *all* publications for a single local galaxy, but one has to select each sub-catalog of publications.


Here is an example:

Search for NGC 5253, which is a irregular local dwarf galaxy. For this galaxy, about 2100 publications are available, however, they are distributed over the whole galaxy as shown in the image below (named "NGC5253 NC1" or "NGC5253 NC245", etc). There is no option to select all publication linked to this particular galaxy, which would be very useful.


There are at least two user friendly solutions to this:

1) Let the user select different publication entries by dragging a box around them

2) Group the publications together depending on the level of zoom (i.e., zoom in to split the publication into multiple groups depending on the targeted location in the galaxy; zoom out to have only one group with all the publications linked to a galaxy).


Best,

Andreas


Image 41





+1
Completed

Provide pre-defined target lists when ESASky loads (useful for education)

Belén López Martí 6 years ago updated by Bruno Merín 6 years ago 3

In the educational activities, students sometimes have trouble, and waste a lot of time, downloading the target list from the server and uploading it to ESASky. To simplify this, we could provide the target lists directly when ESASky is loaded, either as a menu in the 'Target list' button, or maybe as part of a permalink.

+1
Completed

Allow simultaneous visualization of several skies

Belén López Martí 6 years ago updated by Deborah Baines 3 years ago 3

In the teachers' workshop at ESTEC it was suggested that a very useful feature would be the possibility to visualize several skies/sky regions at the same time. It is something that had already been suggested before. This would make comparisons easier between different objects in the same sky, or between observations of the same object by different missions or in different passbands. 


I can think of two possibilities: via tiling (dividing the window into smaller pieces) and via transparency. Both are implemented in Aladin Desktop. Maybe we should think of possible issues with the data panel interaction, though...

Answer
Deborah Baines 3 years ago

Thanks Belén. Indeed, this request has come already often. I have added it to our backlog.

+1
Under review

Some visualization suggestions

Pedro Gomez 6 years ago updated by anonymous 6 years ago 3

Here are some visualizations suggestions I think they can be useful at preparing observations:

  • Allow defining the FoV orientation (rotation of the foV)
  • Allow flipping the FoV
  • Allow toggling show/hidden selected sources
Answer
anonymous 6 years ago

Dear Pedro,


Thanks for the suggestions. We can include them as sub-user-stories for the future feature to allow users to upload their custom Fields of View for observation planning. I would like to understand the flipping though.. what is the usecase there? You have a definition of the instrument but not as projected in the sky?


Thanks, we will keep you posted.


Bruno

On behalf of the ESDC

+1
Under review

Include JWST accepted GTO/ERS targets as a catalog in ESASky

anthony marston 6 years ago updated by anonymous 6 years ago 1

Just thought -- if this easy to do -- can we put in the accepted JWST GTO and ERS target lists as a catalog in ESASky??? By Nov 30 2017 when Cycle 1 is released ?

+1
Under review

Allow upload DS9 format regions

Pedro Gomez 7 years ago updated by anonymous 6 years ago 2

During the commissioning of the MEGARA instrument at GTC, ESAsky was used. It was very useful, but it would be even more with the capability of uploading DS9 region files, mainly used to represent instruments focal planes.


http://ds9.si.edu/doc/ref/region.html


Other formats as VO would be nice, but ds9 is still broadly used in the astronomical community

+1
Completed

Vizier catalogue overlay (for Herschel Galactic Plane data)

Roland Vavrek 7 years ago updated by Deborah Baines 1 year ago 3

The Hi-Gal Consortium public database provides an incremental access to compact source catalogues through Vizier (http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-3?-source=J/A%2bA/591/A149&-out.max=50&-out.form=HTML%20Table&-out.add=_r&-out.add=_RAJ,_DEJ&-sort=_r&-oc.form=sexa) as well as through the Vialactea Project web-interface (http://tools.asdc.asi.it/HiGAL.jsp).


It would be a useful scientific tool and a great added value if EsaSky can provide a capability to overlay catalogues on background intensity maps. The interwoven structure of filaments Herschel resolves in large-scale images are well correlated with locations of starless and star forming cores. An overlay functionality could guide scientist to identify 'interesting' areas for follow-up studies. Filtering of overlaid sources based on catalogued observables (colours, photometry, size, shape parameters etc.) could further enhance the science use of such functionality.