Визуальные инструментальные средства исследования создавались для SkyServer, чтобы сделать проще визуализацию и детализацию астрономических данных в областях неба, покрываемых SDSS. Они могут точно определять область интереса по центру и размеру. Лежащий в основе веб-сервис затем комбинирует значимые изображения в форму JPEG мозаики запрошенного разрешения. Она может давать дополнительную полезную информацию, включая:

• границы съемочных областей и апертуры;
• очертания объектов и маски качества данных;
• местоположения фотометрических и спектроскопических объектов.

*Примечание: Инструментальные средства Finding Chart, Navigate and Image Lists создают мозаику на лету перекрывающихся областей SDSS, которая может быть составлена за один или несколько проходов. The field area displayed in the overlap region is determined by the (arbitrary) order in which the fields are being superimposed by the mosaicing software. However, the sky may have changed from one run to the next. Observations of moving or variable objects like meteors, satellites, comets, variable stars, etc. may appear in one run but not in the other, or be different from one run to the other. We suggest that if you want to carefully examine any object(s) close to a field boundary, you should use either the Get Image by Field tool which displays the whole JPEG frame for individual fields in each run, or get the FITS file from the Explorer or the Data Archive Server.

• Finding Chart
  The page returns a JPEG image centered on (ra,dec), of size (height x width) where the image is scaled to an arbitrary scale (scale). Various drawing options can be specified (opt). Please see Getting Started with Finding Chart.
  
• Navigate
  This page provides easy navigation in the vicinity of a given point on the sky. One can move around by clicking on the frame of the image, or on individual objects. A short list of the basic properties and a magnified thumbnail image of the object nearest to the selected point is then displayed. Please see Getting Started with Navigate.
  
• Image List
  This page can generate thumbnails of SDSS images based upon a user defined list of object positions. The images are linked to the other tools. The list can also be specified with a query. Please see Getting Started with Image List.
  
• Explore
  The Explore Tool contains a summary of an object, and interactive links to further detailed properties, like its spectrum or neighbors, etc.