I'm having trouble understanding the construction of the Leray spectral sequence for continuous maps (not necessarily fibrations). More precisely, given a continuous map $f : X \to Y$ between two topological spaces (say as nice as we want) spaces, I would like to understand how to construct the $E_2$ term $$E_2^{pq} = H^*(Y,\mathcal{H}^*),$$ where $\mathcal{H}^*$ is the pre-sheaf $U \mapsto H^*(f^{-1}(U))$. I know a bit about sheaf cohomology, but honestly I don't really understand how this pre-sheaf appears, or why/if we need to look at its sheafification.
I have several general questions regarding all this, some being even more general:
- Why are we always talking about the $E_2$-term and not the $E_1$-term of a spectral sequence?
- From where to I need to start in order to construct this $E_2$-term ?
- Suppose that there exists an open cover $\{ U_i \}$ of $Y$ such that $\mathcal{H}^*(U_i) = \mathcal{G}^*(U_i)$, where $\mathcal{G}^*$ is another pre-sheaf (for instance the constant one). Under what condition could we have: $$H^*(Y,\mathcal{H}^*) = H^*(Y, \mathcal{G}^*) ?$$
Does anyone have a nice reference to these concepts (important to note that I'm no specialist in algebraic geometry :))
Thanks a lot for your help !