SKY-MAP.ORG / WIKISKY » API

update on AstroOverlay and other stuff

admin — Tue, 18 May 2010 15:40:26 +0000

Recently we did cleanup and performance optimization on out new Astronomical Image Overlay interface. It is ready now for significant traffic hits.

By the way, about traffic: Last Friday our servers have been flooded by “bored visitors” , I mean visitors from www.i-am-bored.com web site. I must admit – there is a lot of “bored” surfers on the Net. Our traffic more than doubled. It was a good and pretty successful test for our latest build with a lot of effort put toward performance optimization and stability increase.

Another good news – we’ve got faster internet connections on two of our servers – sky3 and sky7. We use these servers to handle mostly “heavy” on CPU tasks and the only servers that allowed to produce extralarge snapshots (16+ megapixels)

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short demo on how does astro-overlay link works

admin — Sat, 01 May 2010 16:13:31 +0000

The short video below demonstrates how you can enrich any online astronomical image with WikiSky’s AstroOverlay features right in your browser just by using javascript link described in previous post

Astro-Overlay demo

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New interface introduction – Astronomical Image Overlay

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:33:15 +0000

The SKY-MAP team is happy to introduce new interface we are working on right now called Astronomical Image Overlay. It allows (by adding single line of code to a page that show one or more astronomical images) to add new cool layer of other images overlapping same patch of the sky (drag mouse over the image below and you will notice the line of other images that you can zoom by moving mouse over):

Galaxy Wars: M81 versus M82; Credit & Copyright: Leonardo Orazi; Source: APOD

If you want to add this interface to your page, simply add this line of code at the end of your html file, before tag:

Moreover, you can simply add this interface right in your browser to any page you are visiting by simply putting following code in browser’s location (URL) following by :

javascript:a=document.createElement('script');a.src='http://sky-map.org/js/astroOverlay';a.onload=function(){astroOverlay()};document.body.appendChild(a);void+0

or put that line in your browser’s bookmarks toolbar, and by clicking on it current page you are visiting will be enriched with the AstroOverlay interface (currently doesn’t work in Internet Explorer). The interface is new and we are still working on fixing bugs and user experience improvements. Feel free to give it a try and let us know what’s your experience with this new feature.

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Version 2 Window API

WikiSky — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 04:31:53 +0000

I mentioned already about SkyWindow API. Here’s a newer version.
SkyWindow2 API:

Below is the html code that does the trick:

One important detail: If you want to show object info labels while moving mouse over the map. You need to add simple proxy script on your server to redirect AJAX calls to WikiSky servers. The reason is that browser’s JavaScript security policy does not allow to make AJAX call to any server except the one current page loaded from.

Here’s an example of simple php code:


post('/'.$u, file_get_contents("php://input"));
} else {
   $client->get('/'.$u);
}
$contentType = $client->getHeader("Content-Type");
$pageContents = $client->getContent();
header('Content-type: '.$contentType);
echo $pageContents;
?>

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Bug in skywindow

WikiSky — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:20:50 +0000

Users who use our SkyWindow API reported that the interface stopped working when we put new surveys on-line. The has been fixed, thanks for the prompt report and sorry for the issue, we’re really miss QA department to test our builds before posting it on-line. Anyway I’m putting the SkyWindow here, so if you don’t see nice picture of the Messier 51 galaxy from SDSS in the window below, you are welcome to become our QA team

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