Expanded documentation on NED searches

[gpdf]

While fiddling with NED searches I thought I'd expand/clarify the documentation a bit. See what you think.

I think it would also be nice to ask the Firefly team to put a subheading at the top of the search tab itself, something like "Search the NASA Extragalactic Database (NED) at IPAC by coordinates", maybe? And a little NED icon? @xiuqin if you like that idea, we can make a FIREFLY- ticket for that.

[lrebull]

for this:

superpose NED search results on search results you've already obtained from other sources.

For all of these catalog searches, one could say that you can superpose these results onto search results you've already obtained from other sources. I'm not sure why NED alone would get that special phrase added. It does already say as part of the introductory matter that the catalogs are overlaid on the images.

The rest of it looks ok to me.

[gpdf]

I'm not sure why NED alone would get that special phrase added.

That's a fair point. I was trying to obliquely address the "why search NED by proxy when you can have the real thing?" question. But perhaps this is obvious to anyone who has gotten this far in the application - would that be your take?

It does already say as part of the introductory matter that the catalogs are overlaid on the images

A user who gets here by deep link from the "(?)" icon will not have seen that material, though.

[lrebull]

Yeah, it's hard to make it clear for people dropping in but not horrifically redundant for people reading the whole thing, and I'm not sure where to draw the line... though the line is probably somewhere before I have to remember to change something in all 5 places in the same file, for example. :) I was trying to minimize repetition by "The search results are then shown (and interacted with) in the same way as the other catalogs described here." But I do see that I don't have that for all the catalog searches, sigh!!

Maybe a section of the catalog 'chapter' called 'interacting with catalogs' (as opposed to loading catalogs, which most of the chapter is at the moment) that has an overview with pointers to plots, visualization, tables (including filters) -- all of which are other chapters. ??

[xiuqin]

This tab allows performing a cone search in the NED objects directory

[xiuqin]

... to search for and load objects data from ...

[xiuqin]

Gregory and I slacked on consistency vs more information separately. We agree it need a wider discussion.
I have a separate change request on documents.

NED is not a catalog. I suggest we use "NED objects" when 'NED catalog" is used. Some phrases I found:
"NED Catalogs -- Overlaying catalogs obtained from NED"
"search for and load a catalog from NED"

[lrebull]

OK. I will work on changing all instances of "catalog from NED" and add a section explicitly on "interacting with catalogs" early next week.

[lrebull]

I changed (and propagated) all instances of "NED catalog" to "NED object" in the text and menus. Working on other stuff next.

[lrebull]

OK, merged thoughts from Gregory and Xiuqin (and me) into the docs version now checked into master. I have also shot myself in the foot with git (again), and although the files are identical as per diff in my directories, git says they are different and cannot be merged properly between the firefly-help branch and the irsa-ui-help branch with the firefly directory. I need someone with more git-fu than me to help fix this.

[lrebull]

( new version built here: https://master.irsakudev.ipac.caltech.edu/onlinehelp/ )

[xiuqin]

Thank you for the update. The NED portion looks good to me.

[lrebull]

can we just close this without merging it? I've manually made all the changes.

[gpdf]

Let me give the new version a read-through first.

Meanwhile I've marked this PR as "draft" so that it won't be possible to accidentally merge it with a stray click.

[gpdf]

@lrebull I'm snowed under with SPHEREx and family things today, but I'll do it tomorrow.

[lrebull]

ah, yes, here it says you wanted to look at what i'd done.