Overlay my own equirectangular map as a sky layer
I was wondering if it would be possible to add a way to upload my own sky maps to view them as a layer among the different sky options. I deal with a lot of equirectangular maps that are in either ra/dec or galactic coordinates that would be interesting to see along with surveys and even to quickly investigate overlapping areas of interest. If there was a simple option to upload a jpg or png when creating a new row under sky select and specifying if it is in ra/dec or galactic that would be amazing. I would use it to plot sky models but I imagine others could use it to plot points of interest, observing footprints, or their own images. For example, in figure 9 of this paper there are some maps that (if plotted fully 90 to -90) could be simply mapped into ESA sky. If all maps are required to be full-sky as a standard it would likely be easier to integrate.
Customer support service by UserEcho
Dear Jhmadden,
Many thanks for your request. As you've seen, there is not currently a way to upload your images as jpg or png. We will add this to our backlog as a good feature to have in ESASky.
Also, we do have the option to upload as HiPS. What you'll need to do is follow the steps in the Aladin hipsgen pages to create a HiPS from your images:
https://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/hips/HipsIn10Steps.gml
Note that you'll have to follow the jpeg options lower down in the page. For specific questions or issues, in particular related to generating a HiPS from an equirectangular map, please contact the CDS team who created hipsgen: cds-question@unistra.fr
Once you have created a HiPS, the steps in ESASky are: click on the skies button, select the + button, choose the option 'HiPS from your computer' and select the folder that was created in the above steps. Your images should now appear as a layer in the skies menu, titled user.
I hope you find this useful.
Many thanks for your suggestion.
Kind regards,
Deborah, on behalf of the ESASky team