ZTF Known Bugs and Issues

Software version released: October 2024.

This list last updated: October 2024


Table of Contents

Reporting Bugs
Suggested Browsers
Known Major Bugs
Known Minor Bugs
Idiosyncrasies

Reporting Bugs

The known bugs and issues in this version of the ZTF service are listed here. If you think you have found a bug, before reporting it, please check this list, and read the online ZTF help. It may be a "feature" we already know about.

If you have found a real bug then please do let us know by sending email to the Help Desk. Please include your operating system version and your browser software and version.


Suggested Browsers and Platforms

Older browser versions than these may work, but we may not be able to support bug fixes for them. We make no guarantees for anything on Solaris.

Known Major Bugs

None known.

Known Minor Bugs

  1. VO catalog results not displayed

    2. For VO catalog searches, the tool retrieves the catalog but is unable to display it.

    Workaround: Download the catalog yourself from another VO access point (see here) and upload it seperately to the tool.

    Posted: March 23, 2016


Known Idiosyncracies


'Lost' Downloads

Depending on how your browser is configured, when you download data, your browser may save it in a counter-intuitive place. Under Safari (on the Mac), for small downloads, it might not appear to have done anything at all. It actually has; it's trying to be helpful by doing it quickly. To find where your browser has put your data, (a) search on your local disk for recently modified files; (b) look in the preferences for the browser configuration option of where to put downloaded files; or (c) look for a directory called "Downloads" or something similar.

Posted: 4 March 2014


  • Regions files saved as overlays from large catalogs do not include all the sources.

    If the file has >1,000 sources, it will show catalogs hierarchically -- that is, the tool will bin up the catalogs based on HEALPix pixels, and it will show symbols with a number indicating the number of sources in that region. Then, when you zoom in, it will dynamically adapt to show you smaller and smaller cells until it shows you all the individual sources. Saving the regions file at will not save all the sources.

    Workaround: Save the catalog from the table as a regions file; that will save the entire catalog, but not any of the other overlays from the image.

    Updated: October 2024


    • Strange behavior when requesting catalogs

    Our catalog search options depend on other services, often other IRSA services, to search and display the catalogs. Sometimes these other services are down for maintenance or may be experiencing unusually heavy loads. On those occasions, the user may get an "Unresponsive script" error or a "Call failed on the server" error. Please do let us know if you continue to get these errors; we may not be aware of an overloaded or down server.

    Posted: 4 March 2014


    Slow behavior when requesting large tables

    When rendering long tables, the table can take several seconds to finish loading. For example, if you conduct a search returning 10000 entries, and change the page size from 50 to 2000, the browser will struggle for a few seconds trying to load the table. A red message appears to let you know that that is what is going on.

    Posted: 4 March 2014


    Strange behavior, often transient

    Sometimes there can be unusual behavior in the tool. If something isn't working (especially if it used to work), try opening a new window without cookies, e.g., a "private window" in Firefox, or an "incognito window" in Chrome) and start the tool there. This usually resolves most of the odd behavior.

    Posted: 6 December 2019