HEASARC Staff Scientist Position - Applications are now being accepted for a Staff Scientist with significant experience and interest in the technical aspects of astrophysics research, to work in the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, MD. Refer to the AAS Job register for full details.

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MAKI: The Astro-E/Multi-Mission Observation Visualizer

Welcome to the Observation Visualizer for Astro-E. This is powered by the LHEA plugin. Get it at the Plugin Page.

Obtaining the LHEA plugin

  1. Get the LHEA plugin.
  2. unpack (gzip -c FILE | tar xvf -)
  3. go into tclplug20 directory and type "./install.sh" to install
  4. Choose "individual install" option; when that finishes, "Quit"
  5. Exit netscape, if it's running, and restart it (so plugin takes hold)
  6. Go to Skyview (also located here), to use the Advanced mode.
  7. As with any SkyView session, choose a source and a survey (and we recommend clicking the 'Display results in new window' gadget to "Off" to avoid cluttering your desktop in this case).
  8. After SkyView has loaded the image, there will be an option near the middle/bottom for "MAKI"-- click that.
  9. MAKI now begins on your screen. Play. Have fun.

About MAKI

MAKI is a tool that accepts an image file from SkyView and plots it, along with when that target is visible during the current year. You may then place different satellite fields of view on top of the image, to plan out your observation. These FOVs may be rotated, and MAKI will indicate if the roll is allowed (green = good roll, yellow = bad roll, red = target simply not visible).

You can also view the sun angle visibility limits for several missions, as well as adding phase constraints and also seeing what the total overlapping window of opportunity for your selections is.

MAKI can handle almost any FITS image file. It also lets you save the results, and reload them. It does pop up its own window for all use.

  • Use MAKI through SkyView
  • Launch visualizer by itself. If you need a test image, you can load "http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/Tools/maki/algol.fits"
  • Read the MAKI Quickstart Guide

  • To get MAKI as a stand-alone program:
    1. First, fetch the source file, 'MAKI.tcl'. This means either using 'shift+click' or choosing 'save file to my machine' in your browser. A normal browser click with merely run MAKI, so make sure you're fetching the file to save, instead. Then do the same thing with this small Javascript file 'maki_loader.html'.
    2. Next, start up your browser, resize it to a good size, and load the file 'maki_loader.html'. If you have any problems make sure the "loader" file and the file 'MAKI.tcl" are in the same directory and that you have Javascript enabled in your browser.

    API

    Want to use MAKI from your own search engine or web tool? Just have a link to the following, with your choice of FITS image:
    http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/Tools/maki/maki.pl?YOUR_URL_TO_A_FITS_FILE_HERE

    That's it... MAKI will work from your tool and pop up a window for users to do work in.

    A note on coordinate schemes. For all missions, the roll angle is defined in X-ray sky images ("look-up" direction); increasing roll angle corresponds to a counterclockwise rotation of the image. A few mission-specific details are noted here when appropriate.

    A full API for the plotting and interactive functions in the LHEA plugin will be released later this year. Version 1.2 of MAKI has been released.

    Address MAKI questions to Chris Baluta