The Legacy Survey Sky Viewer is generally intuitive, but here are some additional features of which you might not be aware:
- Each time you reload the page, you'll jump to a new random NGC galaxy within the most recent Legacy Survey footprint.
- You can jump to a new random galaxy by entering a blank string in the "Jump to object" search box.
- Clicking on the map will return a popup with a few different options. A particularly useful option is "Link Here", which redirects your browser to a URL that should reproduce what you're seeing - at the correct position, zoom, and layer, with the correct overlays enabled. This is convenient if you want to share something of note.
- If you notice something unusual which you'd like to bring to the attention of the LegacySurvey team, you can click on the map and in the popup look for the "Discuss This Object" link. That will direct you to our discussion forum, with a link back to your object of interest.
- If you click on the RA,Dec coordinate readout box, you can enter an RA, Dec, and zoom number that you'd like to view.
- If you select one layer and then select a second layer, you can flip back to the previous layer using the space bar. This is handy to "blink" between two layers, e.g., to look for moving objects.
A list of the URL patterns that are supported by the viewer is available here.