SKY-MAP.ORG / WIKISKY » SDSS

January 2011 status update

admin — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 19:43:49 +0000

End of 2010 was quite hot for our servers. Visitors traffic grown from usual 300,000 visits per month to over 1,500,000 visits in December alone. Our poor 6 years old servers reached it’s capacities on all ends – processors power, disks space and IO performance. We had to shut down some services in order to keep our servers up.

In other news, Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) last week released new version – SDSS-III (DR8). It is most significant update since probably DR3. It now covers 1/3 of whole sky. In addition all existing fields has been rebuild with higher quality. The imaging survey contains about a million fields 3 mega pixels each, that totals to 3 Terra pixels of imaging data (compare to 1 Terra pixel of whole sky DSS2 sky survey). We are currently working on adding new SDSS data to our sky map.

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0-zoom images updated

WikiSky — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 05:17:19 +0000

DSS2 all sky image (aitoff projection)

SDSS all sky image (aitoff projection)

RASS3 all sky image (aitoff projection)

GALEX all sky image (aitoff projection)

Astrophoto all sky image (aitoff projection)

IRAS (infrared) all sky image (aitoff projection)

H-Alhpa all sky image (aitoff projection)

We have updated images at top zoom level (0). We already had 0-zoom images for IRAS, H-Alpha, astrophoto and SKY-MAP surveys. New images include DSS2, SDSS, RASS3 and GALEX surveys. Also astrophoto updated with latest images. The top level images represent whole sky in aitoff projection with center in R.A.=12^h, Dec.=0°

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GALEX

WikiSky — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 05:03:32 +0000

Helix Nebula in ultraviolet (GALEX)

M33 (Triangulum Galaxy) on GALEX

We’re about to finish work on new high resolution all sky survey – GALEX. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer is an orbiting space telescope observing galaxies in ultraviolet light across 10 billion years of cosmic history. GALEX GR4 imaging data contains about 31,200 2 color band frames with round image area of 2900 pixels in diameter each. It’s our third largest survey with its 200,000 megapixles of data after SDSS (1,100,000 MPixels) and DSS2 (800,000 MPixels). For now GALEX survey is available on two servers – server3.wikisky.org and server7.wikisky.org

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Sloan Digital Sky Survey local hosting

WikiSky — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 04:48:21 +0000

We’ve added to WikiSky ability to cut images from SDSS (DR7) locally. WikiSky is still using exetrnal cutout tool (casjobs.sdss.org) for SDSS DR6,5,4 and 3. The problem with casjobs is that it has limited projection options that causes siginificant alignment problems when you move far away from projection center. Our image cutout tool has rich projections options, including multiple geometric projections, rotation, reverse, projection center shift and more. Also we’ve added ability to view object on every available SDSS frame. When you open info page of an object you’ll see list of SDSS frames with the object right after list of astro image thumbnails. By clicking on one of the frames you’ll see full SDSS survey with the selected frame in foreground.

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Sloan Digitial Sky Survey updated

WikiSky — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:24:09 +0000

We published new data release of SDSS sky survey (SDSS DR7). We also opened access to previous sky surveys since DR3 and added ability to show SDSS survey in wide angle. Before there was limitation to show survey in zoom level 6 and deeper due to angle restriction on remote server that hosts the survey’s images (SkyServer). After recent upgrade (thanks to everyone who supporting us) we’ve been able to upload wide angle images on our servers and fill the gap in survey rendering.

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