AstroInspect: a web-based system to organize, assess, and visually inspect astronomical objects

Abstract

The rapid growth of imaging and spectroscopic surveys has intensified the need for efficient tools that support visual inspection, a practice that remains essential for tasks such as classification, catalog refinement, and validation of automated methods. Existing solutions, however, often require the use of multiple platforms and complex workflows to integrate heterogeneous data. To address this challenge, we present the first release of the AstroInspect (https://astroinspect.github.io), a web-based system which ensures seamless access to several astronomical resources. The system provides an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) through which users can upload catalogs of objects defined by celestial coordinates. AstroInspect automatically enriches these catalogs with complementary information, including imaging, spectroscopic, and photometric data retrieved in real time from surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the Legacy Surveys (LS), and the Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey (S-PLUS). As an example of its scientific utility, we used AstroInspect to identify H$\alpha$ emission-line galaxies within a 7 deg radius in the direction of the Hydra I cluster (also known as Abell 1060) by visual inspection. Using a candidate set of 981 galaxies selected from S-PLUS photometric data, we produced a catalog of 80 galaxies with confirmed H$\alpha$ emission. These results highlight the potential of AstroInspect to support efficient visual inspection workflows.

20 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, accepted in AJ

References in corpus (45)

• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE): Mission Description and Initial On-orbit Performance
• The Astropy Project: Building an inclusive, open-science project and status of the v2.0 core package
• The Astropy Project: Sustaining and Growing a Community-oriented Open-source Project and the Latest Major Release (v5.0) of the Core Package
• LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products
• The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS)
• The Galaxy Evolution Explorer: A Space Ultraviolet Survey Mission
• The 2.5 m Telescope of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Overview of the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys
• Galaxy Zoo : Morphologies derived from visual inspection of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Mass Function of an X-Ray Flux-Limited Sample of Galaxy Clusters
• The Multi-Object, Fiber-Fed Spectrographs for SDSS and the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
• The Dark Energy Survey: more than dark energy - an overview
• Galaxy Zoo 1 : Data Release of Morphological Classifications for nearly 900,000 galaxies
• First Data Release of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program
• A Catalog of Detailed Visual Morphological Classifications for 14034 Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• unWISE: unblurred coadds of the WISE imaging
• BUDHIES II: A phase-space view of HI gas stripping and star-formation quenching in cluster galaxies
• Project Overview of the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey
• The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey First Data Release
• The wide-field, multiplexed, spectroscopic facility WEAVE: Survey design, overview, and simulated implementation
• The Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey (S-PLUS): improved SEDs, morphologies and redshifts with 12 optical filters
• Galaxy Zoo: The properties of merging galaxies in the nearby Universe - local environments, colours, masses, star-formation rates and AGN activity
• 4MOST - 4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope
• The EFIGI catalogue of 4458 nearby galaxies with detailed morphology
• The UKIRT Hemisphere Survey: Definition and J-band Data Release
• CANDELS Visual Classifications: Scheme, Data Release, and First Results
• A volume-limited sample of X-ray galaxy groups and clusters - I. Radial entropy and cooling time profiles
• The DESI Survey Validation: Results from Visual Inspection of the Quasar Survey Spectra
• Galaxy interactions I: Major and minor mergers
• A catalog of merging dwarf galaxies in the local universe
• Hierarchical progressive surveys. Multi-resolution HEALPix data structures for astronomical images, catalogues, and 3-dimensional data cubes
• SciServer: a Science Platform for Astronomy and Beyond
• On the discovery of stars, quasars, and galaxies in the Southern Hemisphere with S-PLUS DR2
• An environmental dependence of the physical and structural properties in the Hydra Cluster galaxies
• PlayMolecule Viewer: a toolkit for the visualization of molecules and other data
• Spectroscopic Analysis in the Virtual Observatory Environment with SPLAT-VO
• SAMP, the Simple Application Messaging Protocol: Letting applications talk to each other
• IVOA Recommendation: Simple Cone Search Version 1.03
• Deep Learning Assessment of galaxy morphology in S-PLUS DataRelease 1
• TOPCAT: Desktop Exploration of Tabular Data for Astronomy and Beyond
• Diagnostic diagrams for ram-pressure stripped candidates
• Hydra I: An extensible multi-source-finder comparison and cataloguing tool
• IVOA Recommendation: SAMP - Simple Application Messaging Protocol Version 1.3
• Morphological Classification of Galaxies in S-PLUS using an Ensemble of Convolutional Networks