This WWW form allows the user to obtain "postage stamp" FITS or jpeg images or contour plots of selected, small fields from the VLA observations of the SIRTF First Look Survey field. First Look Survey lies inside the SIRTF "constant viewing zone" near the north ecliptic pole. It covers about 5 square degrees in a region having a relatively faint cirrus foreground, centered on J2000 RA = 17 18 00., declination = +59 30 00. The VLA image of this field has a resolution of 5 arcseconds FWHM and an RMS noise of 23 microJy/beam at 1.4 GHz.
The image from the SIRTF FLS/VLA is stored in a single large image. The desired region of a "postage stamp" to be made from these files is specified by a central Right Ascension and declination and the width of the field in Right Ascension and declination. Other aspects of the geometry in the resultant image can also be specified. The specified region is returned as a FITS or jpeg format image or a contour plot.
Descriptions of individual fields on this form follow:
This is the equinox of the coordinates to be used for input coordinates. The resulting FITS file will use this equinox for coordinates.
This string gives the name of the object. This is used for labeling purposes only and is not used to obtain the position. The default is "unnamed".
The desired position on the sky is expressed in terms of its celestial position which consists of a Right Ascension (like longitude but expressed in hours) and declination (like latitude). The central Right Ascension at the specified equinox is given as hh mm ss.s (hours minutes and seconds of time). Values in the range 17 30 0. to 17 05 0 are valid.
The central declination is given as +/-dd mm ss.s (degrees, minutes and seconds of arc). Values in the range 58 0 0 to +61 0 0 are valid.
These values specify the maximum field size in the returned image in RA and Declination in arcmin. The returned image may be truncated if the requested field exceeds the boundaries of the image. There is also a limit of 262,144 pixels in the returned image; this corresponds to a 512 x 512 image.
There are a number of supported projections of the (spherical) sky onto a
flat image:
These images normally have a pixel spacing of 1.5 arcseconds in each dimension but the image can be interpolated to other spacings. Note: a larger value will lose information in the image.
The image can be rotated relative to the input image by the amount specified here in degrees. The rotation is in the sense that north rotates towards east. Note: the axis labeling on the contour plots cannot accurately represent data with a rotation on the sky. Do not use a non zero rotation for contour plots.
The returned image may be one of several types.
Web browsers use external viewers to display files like FITS images which they do not understand. In order to invoke an external viewer, it is necessary to associate a particular viewer with a particular MIME type. This postage stamp server can return a FITS file with the MIME type of image/x-fits; your browser needs to be told a suitable display program for FITS files.
There are a number of programs which can read and display FITS images but most of these are inadequate for the high dynamic range of the image and lose all of the astronomical information. The limited dynamic range is a problem because the brightest pixels in a given image are typically many times brighter than the faintest; thus the general result is a few white dots on a black background. At very least, control over the contrast and brightness is needed if not some control over the range of values displayed in order to get the best display of the objects in the image. One suitable external viewer is the FITSview family of FITS image viewers is available for a variety of computer systems.
In order to use an external viewer with your Web browser you need to install the software on your computer. Then the browser needs to be told to associate MIME type image/x-fits with your broswer. The details of this depend on the particular browser; consult the documentation for your browser for details. For Unix systems this can generally be done in the .mailcap file in your home directory by inserting an entry like:
image/x-fits; XFITSview %s
in which XFITSview is the desired external viewer.