"Quickview" tools showing what any galaxy looks like

[madbadgalaxyman (Robert)]

Dear All,

Here are my recommended online and software tools for quickly finding good .jpg images of any southern galaxy of interest:
[ This post is copied from the astro-imaging forum, as it is also very relevant to visual observers.]

(I have excluded, here, the NED website, which is of course an excellent image source)

Here is an extract from my email to William Keel:

"
For the record, here I list the tools that I use to quickly and easily (but not with precision) compare UV (and other wavelengths) imaging data with optical imaging data, for southern galaxies.

Much of my astronomical work involves quickly comparing images of many different galaxies, or quickly accessing & comparing several images of a specific galaxy at various wavelengths. Therefore, of necessity, I prefer tools that can quickly show me what a specific part of the sky looks like, and I infrequently access the data archives

(1) //aladin.u-strasbg.fr/AladinPreview
This is my favorite version of online DSS, though the morphological resolution of the images becomes extremely coarse once one uses it to view galaxies of B = 14 magnitude (a far cry from the resolution of SDSS!). Apart from displaying the standard DSS2 images, the Aladin version of DSS also contains scans from the ESO Survey made with MAMA.....which are often of very good quality for southern objects. This tool (Aladin Preview) is a very efficient interface for quick .jpg previews of the DSS data, moreover you can put an object name or coordinates into the target box.

(2) //leda.univ-lyon1.fr
I look up the desired target galaxy using this LEDA database ("hyperleda"), and then I click on the "FITS Archive" option. Then, a further click or two quickly gives me really good previews of the DSS image. In many ways, these previews are complementary to the Aladin previews that I mentioned in item (1). The contrast and morphological resolution of the preview image of a galaxy in LEDA is often very different from the contrast and resolution of the preview in the Aladin database, so I always use both Aladin and LEDA to assess the optical morphology of a southern galaxy.

(3) //server1.wikisky.org
While wikisky is far from being the sharpest version of DSS, for some reason the DSS images are displayed in wikisky at higher contrast than they are at other websites. I don't entirely trust these DSS images (plenty of artefacts), but you can't beat this version of DSS for showing faint features in galaxies. While wikisky is somewhat slow and clunky, its large field of view provides a good way to quickly assess the appearance and the environment of a galaxy.

(4) I use the electronic starchart software called "Guide V.8" to very speedily "go to" objects and plot galaxies as symbols on a sky map.
I also use this software to speedily find out what catalog objects exist at specific grid-references in the sky. The positional accuracy is excellent for the galaxies in the displayed starcharts (not far off SDSS in accuracy). This is a most useful software tool, as it quickly and easily finds and plots, on a "virtual sky", the entire PGC. It also plots the "extended PGC", that is, it plots the LEDA galaxies.
Guide V.8 can also accurately find the coordinates of any galaxy displayed on the chart. Also, Cross-identifications for all of the galaxies, which are accessed in popup data boxes, are accurate and comprehensive.
Guide V.8 is like a Swiss Army Knife......it can do just about everything, and it is reliable and accurate.
I don't know if professional astronomers use Guide V.8, as it was originally an "amateur tool", but I have probably accessed
several x 10,000 galaxies with this software, and this software has proved to be accurate on every occasion, as it simply gets the catalog data in its database and plots it on a virtual sky.

(5) I also use my own personal collection of some 20,000 galaxy images
"

[Rob_K]

Excellent Robert, thanks for the run-down! I rarely go past Aladin, a fantastic on-line resource with the variety of image sets and massive catalogue availability.

Cheers -

[astroron (Ron)]

Great Resources there Robert,I use some of them I will copy this into book marks and hopefully use some more of them.
Cheers

[Paddy (Patrick)]

Thanks Robert, they are very useful links. I'm a regular at wikisky, but it's great to be introduced the other two.

[madbadgalaxyman (Robert)]

Thanks, Paddy and RobK and Ron,

It seems like we all have our own favourite versions of the Digitized Sky Survey......the online Sky Survey data can be found in several different websites, each with its own unique interface and capabilities. I have probably tried more versions of DSS than most people!

The three flavours of DSS that I have mentioned are the best ones that I know of.
The DSS versions at Aladin and LEDA both give important and unique perspectives on the DSS image of a galaxy, while Wikisky version of DSS provides a lower resolution but deeper DSS image.

Anyone know of an even better version of DSS?

The main limitation on this DSS imaging data is the very modest angular resolution.....I would just love to see a sharper version of DSS!
For the smaller galaxies, in other words galaxies of Blue Magn. > 13.5 , DSS imagery sometimes doesn't cut it, and you might see a very fuzzy image..........often, though, the JHK (J+H+K bands composite)(near-infrared) .jpg image from 2MASS, found in the NED database, gets me out of trouble for some of the fainter galaxies.....these Two Micron All-Sky Survey images are noisy and faint, but they do have good angular resolution.

P.S. The charting software called "Guide" is very similar to the better known "Megastar", but I prefer "Guide" because its popup information boxes are very very rich in data about galaxies.
Undeniably, both of these tools are superb for the really serious deep sky observer.