IRSA Viewer: Overview

The IRSA Viewer allows image visualization and catalog overlays, from off your local disk, the web, and/or other IRSA services.

You can initiate IRSA Viewer by loading the tool directly from the IRSA Viewer button on the front page, or by clicking on a link that says "to IRSA Viewer", or by clicking on a link in a list of search results that looks like this: . If you have loaded the tool directly, the first time you see the IRSA Viewer, it does not have an image pre-loaded; if you have clicked a link or icon to launch it, the first time you see the IRSA Viewer, it already has an image loaded.

Besides the online help (also available as a PDF), note that there are also video tutorials, including quick start and longer AAS-demo-style overviews, available at the IRSA YouTube channel . Also see the IRSA Viewer playlists (one of which collects all the IRSA Viewer tutorials together), as well as the playlist of tutorials relevant for more than one archive.

Contents of page/chapter:
+Terminology
+Tools Overview
+Side Menu and Adding to the Tabs Menu
+Side Menu and Layout/Appearance
+User Login
+Getting More Help

 

Terminology

The words in rectangles across the top are 'tabs.' and you can add or remove tabs from this top level.

This icon in the upper left pulls open a "drawer" from the left hand side which enables you to add or remove tabs from this top level (see below). It also can allow you to change the layout or appearance (dark or light mode) (see below).

When you have things loaded into IRSA Viewer, your browser window is divided into "panes", like "window panes." The contents of the panes depends on what you are doing with the tool, but could include an image pane, a catalog pane, and/or a plot pane. You can expand any of the window panes by clicking on the expand icon:

Each of the three main kinds of 'panes' in the display has its own toolbox in its upper right corner which operates on things in that pane, and the basic functionality for each of these panes is covered elsewhere in this document:

The idea behind "pinning" is that you can retain a given item (a plot or table or image) within the tool. "Pinning" just means "hold on to this item within this tool." It doesn't mean "save this plot (or image or table) to disk", nor does it mean "download the data behind this"; it means "retain this item in this tool for now."

Tools Overview

There is a chapter on images in general, and then a separate chapter on the myriad visualization tools available for manipulating images.

There is a chapter on tables in general, and then separate chapters on both catalogs from IRSA and plots you can make from catalogs. You can also use VO services to conduct more complicated searches, including searches of other archives.

The images, catalogs, and plots are all interlinked such that clicking on one point in the plot highlights the same point in the catalog and the image.

Spectra are a special case of data that use images, plots, and tables, so there is a special chapter on just spectra.

Downloading data has its own page.

The Time Series Tool is somewhat of a separate tool within IRSA Viewer, but its documentation lives here, within IRSA Viewer.

Side Menu and Adding to the Tabs Menu

This icon in the upper left pulls open a "drawer" from the left hand side; the top of it looks like this:
The highlighted bar ("Results" in this example) is the tab you have in the foreground on your main window.

You can use this side menu to add (or remove) blue tabs from the top of your IRSA Viewer interface. By default, Results, Images, Catalogs, and Upload are shown.

Images and Catalogs search IRSA holdings; if you want to search more IRSA data using different tabs, add the "Data Collections" or "VO TAP" tabs.

If you want to search other archives, add one of the tabs under "External archive search tabs": NED Objects, Multi-archive VO TAP (that is, a general TAP search), Multi-archive VO Cone Search, or a CADC VO ObsCore.

Click on the "Hide Tab" button to remove that corresponding tab.

Side Menu and Layout/Appearance

This icon in the upper left pulls open a "drawer" from the left hand side; the bottom of it looks like this:

The first part of this is only available once you have some results shown in the tool. It controls how your results are displayed. By default, it looks like the stylized sketch as shown, with coverage and images on the upper left, charts (plots) in the upper right, and tables on the bottom. You have many more choices, though:

From this menu, you can control the layout of your Results tab -- the relative placement of your images, plots (charts), and tables. The darker one (the top one in this example) is the currently selected one.

The bottom of the side menu controls the appearance of the tool in your browser -- do you want it to run as light mode, dark mode, or respect whatever preferences you have set on your system? Try out the different modes; you may have a preference!

User Login

In the far upper right, there is a link to log in. IRSA Viewer can remember you when you return. See the user registration section for more information.

Getting More Help

The "Help" icon leads you into this online help. There are also context-sensitive help markers throughout the tools (). You can also download a PDF version of this manual; look at the top left of the help window. (The PDF may be easier to search than the web pages; use your PDF reader's search function.)

You can submit questions to the IRSA Help Desk .

A set of frequently asked questions (FAQs) about IRSA Viewer is here.

The IRSA YouTube channel has lots of short videos about IRSA tools.

Found a bug? The known bugs and issues in this version of the IRSA Viewer are listed here . If you think you have found a bug, before reporting it, please check this list, and read this online IRSA Viewer help. It may be a "feature" we already know about. If you have found a new, real bug, then please do contact us via the IRSA Help Desk . Please include your operating system version and your browser software and version. If you can, please also include any specific error message you may have gotten. (NB: In our testing, copying shortcuts worked on Windows and Linux; the command-C did not always work on Macs, but selecting and clicking the right mouse button often did when command-C did not.)