"catalogFromSimbad" function's query

[Ince-M]

We initialize a SIMBAD catalog with the “catalogFromSimbad” function and notice that some sources are not displayed.
displayed. In particular, when we focus on Gal Center and call Simbad, the Gal Center source is not displayed
by the catalog.
This problem is new in v3, as the source is displayed on aladinLite.
We've looked for the source of the problem and it comes from the query used to initialize the catalog on the aladin side.
(https://simbad.cds.unistra.fr/cone?RA=266.41500889&DEC=-29.006111109999992&SR=0.01&RESPONSEFORMAT=json&MAXREC=5000&ORDER_BY=nb_ref)

this query orders the search in relation to “nb_ref” which corresponds to “biblist” which is the number of citations of the source on the Simbad side.
Depending on the limit of the search radius and the number of sources, this query doesn't display the most cited sources, even if we focus on them when initializing the catalog.

A fix would be to “&ORDER_BY=dist” at the end of the url instead of “&ORDER_BY=nb_ref” so that sources are displayed in increasing order of distance from the initialization position.
When using the API, it is possible to use the parameter orderBy : distance.
example : aladin.addCatalog(A.catalogFromSimbad('gal center', 0.1, {onClick: 'showTable', limit: 100, orderBy: 'distance'}));

[tboch]

Thank you for the bug report.
The problem is twofold:

• documentation should be better for catalogFromSimbad , describing the optional parameters limitand orderBy
• the current default (ordering by number of references in ascending order) makes no sense. It should be in descending order.