Modular web-based astronomy widgets

EPO
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#1

I’ve been researching various web-based frameworks featuring astronomy widgets and wondered if anyone could expand my list with others they know of.

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  • ASCOT (videos)
    • ASCII File Loader
    • Data Inquirer
    • DataAset Selector
    • FITS Viewer
    • Histogram
    • Name Resolver
    • Scatter Plot
    • ScalableScatter
    • Sky Viewer
    • Table

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  • Science Server
    • Sky Viewer
    • Tile Viewer
    • Target Viewer
    • Sky Query
    • Cutout Server

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  • Afterglow
    • Table
    • FITS viewer (with labels, measurement, FDU metadata)
    • Histogram (ZScale, MinMax)

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  • Toyz
    • FITS viewer
    • XY Plot
    • Surface Plot
    • Color map
    • Histogram
1 Like
#2

Somewhat related:

#3

Aladin Lite seems to be quite popular in Europe (docs).

#4

Thanks for the recommendation @mjuric. I really like Aladin Lite too, but it seems to be an all-in-one sky viewer where the controls are embedded in a singular widget rather than breaking out the tools into individual widgets which can be mixed & matched depending on your needs. I could be mistaken, though, since I’m not super familiar with it.

One of our use cases is to create classroom activities focusing on a single topic. We’d like to add the ability to use real LSST data to complete the exercise but don’t want to overwhelm the student by sending them to an all-encompassing astronomy tool/interface. Rather, we’re hoping to expose just the data/tools they need to complete that assignment and keep them on the same web page. Thoughts?

#5

I don’t have much first-hand developer-level experience with it; it may be good to contact their devs for further information. They’re quite a responsive bunch.

That said, I’d expect that ultimately our Firefly will also be able to do most (all?) of the things the Aladin Lite viewer can.

#6

There is Glue as well, not sure about web integration but definitely a nice tool

We are doing some work incorporating JS9 and Jupyter together integrated with DB tools as well. Still work in progress but an initial repo is here

#7

Thanks for the suggestion @mgckind! Glue doesn’t support a web presentation mode (desktop only) but it did serve as inspiration for Toyz.

#8

Note that the Firefly x-y plot viewer also includes histogramming. In the Python interface we are developing, the API will provide separate access to the two (i.e., to point plots and histograms).

Note also that name resolution, data discovery, and other functions mentioned above are standard features of existing Firefly applications. We are thinking about how to “widgetize” these for the LSST environment.

#9

Cool, thanks for the update @gpdf

…I really need to find some spare compute cycles to try out Firefly on our local server

P.S. Is a light curve viewer in the works?

#10

Right now it’s possible to plot a basic light curve in the X-Y plotter as a scatterplot of flux vs. MJD, for instance. We are planning on adding both display features such as calendrical axis labeling and computational features such as the ability to display folded light curves. Requirements in this area are driven both by LSST and by ZTF, which is also using Firefly for its archive (including PTF/iPTF).

#11

I wonder how feasible it would be to use a Python-to-Javascript converter for Glue…

#12

Almost impossible (and this is probably generically true for scientific Python libraries), I’d guess, unless those converters are capable of converting Python code that uses NumPy (which I very much doubt, since NumPy is largely implemented in C).

#13

Transcrypt has a companion project called Numscrypt that might show promise in that area.

#14

It looks like creating Jupyter Widgets out of Glue functionalities might be faster than converting completely to JS (automatically or manually).

#15

Good point. I’ll see if @frossie’s SQuaRE group would be interested in a sprint to investigate that possibility.

#16

I would just like to point out that (one of) the developer(s) of Toyz now works for lsst. @fred3m

#17

Yes, we’ve been in correspondence with him. Thanks for the tip!