SPECTRAX

About SpectraX

A citizen science tool built for the Planet X and SPHEREx challenge at the 2026 NASA Space Apps Challenge.

The mission and the data

NASA’s SPHEREx telescope surveys the sky in 102 near-infrared channels from 0.75 to 5 µm. SpectraX uses the public NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) to compare observations and inspect how surface brightness changes with wavelength.

DR1
Spectral images and the all-sky cube used by Spectral Explorer.
QR3
Additional spectral images from later surveys.
NASA mission overview IRSA data access
Blue false-color SPHEREx image of a star field at 0.98 micrometers0.98 µm
Red false-color image of the same field with a bright dust cloud at 3.29 micrometers3.29 µm
The same field in two SPHEREx bands. The dust cloud is visible at 3.29 µm. Visible colors represent infrared wavelengths.Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Data sources

  • SPHEREx DR1 and QR3 spectral images

    Calibrated FITS exposures from NASA/IPAC IRSA feed image comparison, observation timelines and SPHEREx photometry. The viewer uses their quality masks.

  • SPHEREx DR1 All-Sky Cube

    Spectral Explorer uses the NASA/IPAC IRSA cube to plot surface brightness in 102 near-infrared channels and display single-channel or combined detector images.

  • Gaia DR3

    ESA’s Gaia catalog, queried through CDS VizieR, provides the positions for the Gaia overlay.

  • AllWISE

    The WISE source catalog, queried through CDS VizieR, provides the positions for the AllWISE overlay.

  • AAVSO International Database

    Observations submitted by AAVSO contributors supply the optical reference light curves for RW Aurigae and R Draconis.

  • SIMBAD

    CDS SIMBAD supplies the catalog references for the five challenge targets, including their positions, proper motions and parallaxes where available.

  • Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2)

    DSS2 color tiles are the atlas background in CDS Aladin Lite. The app retrieves them from STScI’s MAST mirror or NASA/IPAC IRSA.

  • SPHEREx mission imagery

    NASA/JPL-Caltech provided the home page panorama and the two example infrared images on this page.

Project credits

Built by

  • Ahmet Aras Akyasan
  • Mustafa Emir Yayla
  • Korhan Erol
  • Nisanur Çakır

AI assistance

Coding assistance
GPT SOL 6.1
Code review assistance
GLM 5.3