The SNAD Viewer: Everything You Want to Know about Your Favorite ZTF Object

We describe the SNAD Viewer, a web portal for astronomers which presents a centralized view of individual objects from the Zwicky Transient Facility's (ZTF) data releases, including data gathered from multiple publicly available astronomical archives and data sources. Initially built to enable efficient expert feedback in the context of adaptive machine learning applications, it has evolved into a full-fledged community asset that centralizes public information and provides a multi-dimensional view of ZTF sources. For users, we provide detailed descriptions of the data sources and choices underlying the information displayed in the portal. For developers, we describe our architectural choices and their consequences such that our experience can help others engaged in similar endeavors or in adapting our publicly released code to their requirements. The infrastructure we describe here is scalable and flexible and can be personalized and used by other surveys and for other science goals. The Viewer has been instrumental in highlighting the crucial roles domain experts retain in the era of big data in astronomy. Given the arrival of the upcoming generation of large-scale surveys, we believe similar systems will be paramount in enabling an optimal exploitation of the scientific potential enclosed in current terabyte and future petabyte-scale data sets. The Viewer is publicly available online at https://ztf.snad.space.

Automated summary

SNAD Viewer is a web portal that provides astronomers with a centralized view of individual objects from the Zwicky Transient Facility's (ZTF) data releases, gathering data from multiple sources. It started as a tool for efficient expert feedback in adaptive machine learning applications and has evolved into a community asset that centralizes public information and offers a multi-dimensional view of ZTF sources. The infrastructure is scalable, flexible, and can be personalized for other surveys and scientific goals. The Viewer highlights the importance of domain experts in the era of big data in astronomy and is crucial for optimal exploitation of large-scale data sets.