Skymap Viewer [public]

• Skymap Viewer shows GW event information visually on the sky
  • A "skymap" is a probability density on the celestial sphere: for the position of the source of the GW
  • for poster explaining interface see here
• SV is an astronomical information system
  • zoom to arcsecond
  • multi-wavelength imagery gamma to radio
  • catalogs of galaxies and of galaxy clusters
  • links to NED/SIMBAD
  • local horizon and sun and moon
• SV can show a skymap
  • contour plot with 9 decile contours
  • galaxies from GWGC catalog shown with size~likelihood
  • skymap histogram in latitude/declination
  • library of simulations "First2Years"
• SV can show collections of rectangles on the sky
  • can get input directly from GraceDB (click button "view in Skymap Viewer")
  • add your own observation to GraceDB with the web form input
  • list of RA, list of Dec, list of sizes
• Skymaps can be represented as
  • A Healpix/FITS file as built by LVC position reconstruction pipelines
  • A skymap.json file, with contour lines precomputed, and rich metadata
  • The former needs to be converted to the latter for input to SV (do it with this form)
• Skymaps can be utilized from
  • GraceDB: click the button labelled "View in Skymap Viewer!" example
  • Your own software: use this form to input the skymap and/or the observations
  • The First2Years data release (see here and here)

How you can use Skymap Viewer

• See galaxies likely to contain the GW source
  • click the button "Show Weighted Galaxies"
• See the skymap against the sun, moon, milky way, and local horizon
  • fill in longitude, latitude (eg Pasadena = -118,34)
  • date comes from skymap, or edit it, or click "Now", then "Show Sky"
• See the observation footprints that your fellow observers have taken
  • In GraceDB, click on "see it in Skymap Viewer", then click "Show Bulletin Board" at upper left
• Try out your observation planning tool
  • show proposed observations that tile the skymap, by converting to JSON and put into the web form