Astronomy Software

The core program "starfit" matches stars (triangle fitting) between two lists:
"asc_sextr.cat" is generated by "s_extractor" searching the FITS image, and
"asc_ref.cat" is generated by "crect" searching the USNO-A2 catalog, or by
"msqbin" searching a compressed version of the 2MASS catalog.
Most computational time is spent in sextractor; starfit should work with
image catalogs produced by other means if given in the right format.

EXAMPLES

Usage: ascfit fitsfile [-sw value]

 eg:    ascfit ccd.030  - will fit one file

 eg:    ascfit ccd.03   - will expand list & fit ccd.030-039

 eg:    ascfit ccd.0    - will expand list & fit ccd.000-099

 Example: ascfit ccd.030
      ccd.030:15h08:00.30+0.227X-0.0011Y  -14d49:28.5-0.220Y-
      0.0007X: 67/96/92*,0.40"RMS

      file:RA as f(X/Y) DEC as f(X/Y): Stars fitted/ found in
      image/catalog, RMS error (arcsec)

 ascfit himg.fits -ir -scale 0.3 (specify scale for infrared image)
      himg.fits:03h46:49.45-0.303X-0.0037Y
      +23d46:44.5+0.277Y-0.0029X: 9/10/22*,0.12"RMS

 ascfit aten.230 -roff 140 -doff 140 - fit 8 images from UH8K

 (pointing center is offset from mosaiic center)

aspec

   The spectra can be imported from a variety of common formats, including ASCII tables, ST tables, FITS tables, and IRAF images. If fitting to more than one spectrum, they
   need not share the same dispersion relation. Since ASpec is intended to be a multi-wavelength analysis tool, a number of unit conventions are supported for input, output, and
   data display. (See the discussion of units below.) Various tasks in the TABLES "ttools" package may be used to access the parameter values in the database, either for
   further analysis or for reformating the results for publication. 

   There are at present two tasks, "autospec" and "vuespec", that can be used to build models of selected spectra. The interactive "vuespec" task contains essentially all the
   functionality of the other tasks, while the "autospec" task is more useful for building models that require a great deal of CPU time, and/or for building similar models for many
   spectra (e.g., of different targets) in succession. A productive approach for analyzing many archival spectra might be to use "vuespec" task on a representative spectrum to
   build a "template" component database, and then use that template with the "autospec" task to model the remainder of the spectra. On the other hand, "vuespec" offers a very
   powerful means to view the data, build and edit the components, and to control the fit process and evaluate the resulting model in real time. 

   There are other ancillary tasks with somewhat overlapping and/or complementary functionality. The component database may be built using the "populate" task, and the
   constraint expressions may be verified using the "express" task. The remaining tasks are really psets to specify defaults for the "autospec", "populate", and "vuespec" tasks. 

   More information about each task is available in the online help. This document provides a reference for the modelling process, including detailed descriptions of the fit
   algorithms, definitions of the available model components, and various internal mechanisms of the ASpec package. More detailed help, particularly for navigating the
   interactive "vuespec" task, may be accessed through the "Help" button in the "vuespec" workspace. Alternatively, you can direct your Web browser to URL
   http://www.stsci.edu/ASpec.html. 

astcatx

Astronomical Catalog and Surveys Access Package
Version : 2004.02

Author(s) : Various

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 1.00 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

The astcat package is a set of tasks for extracting astrometric and
photometric calibration data from remote or local catalogs and filtering the
catalog data, and for extracting FITS images from remote or local surveys and
regularizing the header keywords in the extracted images. There is also a task
for selecting images which contain catalog objects and locating the catalog
objects in the image.

The astcatx tasks are designed as a front end for the standard astrometric and
photometric calibrations tasks and for use in automated pipelines where access
to astrometric and photometric catalog data is often an important part of the
reduction process.

Astcat is a standard part of the IRAF 2.12 release. Astcatx should only be
installed if there are no immediate plans to upgrade to IRAF 2.12, or in
order to pick up any post 2.12 release bugs fixes.

The current contents of the ASTCATX package are

   asttest - Run basic tests on the astcat package
    aclist - List the supported astrometric catalogs
   agetcat - Extract astrometry files from astrometric catalogs
  afiltcat - Filter astrometry files derived from astrometric catalogs
  adumpcat - Catalog access debugging task

    aslist - List the supported image surveys
    agetim - Extract FITS images from image surveys
    ahedit - Initialize the image wcs and set standard keywords
   aimfind - Select images containing catalog objects
   adumpim - Image survey access debugging task

  aregpars - Default region parameter set
  acatpars - Default astrometry file format parameter set
 afiltpars - Default astrometry file filtering parameters
   aimpars - Default image data parameters
  awcspars - Default image wcs parameters

help ccsystems - Describe the supported celestial coordinate systems
help catalogs - Describe the astrometric catalog configuration file
help surveys - Describe the image surveys configuation file
help afiles - Describe the standard astrometry file format

Astro-IRAF-CL

Perl module that provides an object-orientated interface to
Version : 0.1.2

Author(s) : Stephen Quinney ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://www.jadevine.org.uk

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 19.70 Kb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

This is a Perl module that provides an object-orientated interface to
the IRAF CL interactive session, it is built on top of the Perl Expect
module. You can script almost anything through this module that you
can do in a normal interactive CL session.

This module provides several improved, and more Perl-like, interfaces
to various IRAF systems, such as session variables, the management of
loading/unloading IRAF packages and the session history. It also
provides the ability to specify maximum run times for commands, and
the clean handling of these time outs and other types of errors and
exceptions. All functions are called in an object-orientated fashion
allowing several concurrent interpreter sessions if desired.

astrolabe

Astrolabe is a collection of subroutines and applications for calculating the positions of the sun, moon, planets and other celestial objects
Version : 0.4

Author(s) : Bill McClain ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://sourceforge.net/projects/astrolabe

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 855.70 Kb
This package requires prior installation of python

Summary

Astrolabe is a collection of subroutines and applications for calculating the positions of the sun, moon, planets and other celestial objects. The emphasis is on high accuracy over a several thousand year time span. Note that the techniques used are overkill for most calendar applications. See the FAQ, Astronomical Calculations for the Amateur for pointers to other methods which are both faster and smaller in terms of code bulk.

The subroutine library attempts to (someday) implement all the techniques described in Astronomical Algorithms, second edition 1998, by Jean Meeus, Willmann-Bell, Inc. For an alternative open-source implementation of Meeus in ANSI C, look here.

Currently there are no graphical applications apart from some demo CGI interfaces. I may add graphics in the future, but I don't intend to create a planetarium program. For a very nice open-source example of such running on Unix/Linux systems, see XEphem. Graphical software for many platforms are linked at Planetarium Software.

AstroMD

/opt/astro/bin/startAstroMD

Screenshots

• several different physical species are treated. For example, cosmological simulations consider both baryonic matter and dark
  matter. Dark matter is usually described by N-body algorithms, while baryons have a fluid-dynamics description (either Eulerian or
  Lagrangian). Further components, like stars or different chemical species, can be introduced and followed in a specific way. These
  different species requires different types of visualization. Dark matter needs particles position or velocity rendering while baryons
  require mesh based visualization. Furthermore particle associated quatities, like the mass density or the gravitational potential,
  require their calculation and visualization on a mesh.

• Simulated structures have a fully three-dimensional distribution. Therefore it is necessar to have a clear 3D representation and
  efficient and fast tools of navigation, selection, zoom and the possibilty of improving the resolution and the accuracy of
  calculations in specific, user-selected, regions

• Evolution can change dramatically the properties of the simulated objects and the information that can be retrived, therefore it is
  important to control efficently sequences of time-frames.

Moreover, in order to build a widely used product it was necessar to use a low cost software portable on a number of different
platforms. We have chosen to use the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) by Kitware. VTK is an open source, freely available software
system for 3D computer graphics, image processing, and visualization. It includes a C++ class library and several interpreted
interface layers. VTK has been ported on nearly every Unix-based platform (e.g. Linux or IRIX) and PC's (Windows NT and
Windows 98). The design and implementation of the library has been strongly influenced by object-oriented principles.
The graphics model in VTK is at a higher level of abstraction than rendering libraries like OpenGL or PEX. This means it is much
easier to create useful graphics and visualization applications. In VTK applications can be written directly in C++, Tcl, Java, or
Python. Using these languages it is possible to build powerful, fast and portable applications.
VTK supports a wide variety of visualization algorithms including scalar, vector, tensor, texture, and volumetric methods and
advanced modeling techniques. It supports stereographic rendering and can be used for virtual realty visualization. Furthermore,
being easily extensible, the system allows ad hoc implementation of specific modules.

All the features described above are integrated in the AstroMD package. Furthermore efficent manipulation and analysis tools,
like smoothing of the particle masses on a mesh or calculation of the power spectrum and correlation functions, are parts of the
basic functionalities.
AstroMD has also stereographic rendering capabilities, which makes it usable for immersive visualization (presently implemented
at the Virtual Theater of CINECA). This completes and improve its capabilities in the representation of three dimensional data
set.

astroperl

astroperl is a collection of perl routines for astronomical catalog access
Version : 1.0

Author(s) : Alasdair Allan ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://www.estar.org.uk/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 2.81 Mb
This package requires prior installation of perl
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startastroperl

Summary

astroperl is a collection of perl routines for astronomical catalog access

Make sure that you have Perl installed and then run
/opt/astro/astroperl/buildall.sh to complete the
installation.

audine

autophot

Autophot uses IRAF's digiphot daophot routines, it automates the procedure a bit.
Version : 30Sep2001

Author(s) : http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~reid/index.html

License : Free

Website : http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~reid/index.html

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 3

Disk space required for installation is 38.62 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startautophot

Screenshots

Summary

The current version of the software suite is autophot_30Sept2001 which has fixed many bugs. Some of the new features are

An experimental difference imaging program is being worked on in the convolve/ subdirectory. This should be finished in a few months.
The autophot programs themselves have been modified to estimate the sky background using either an annulus which scales with the image FWHM (which was done in older versions
of the software), and an annulus with fixed inner and outer radii (new). Using a fixed sky annulus gives much better results when using DAOphot II/Allstar when seeing conditions
are poor. Unfortunately the manual included in the distribution does not yet described the fixed annulus flags (I'll get on to it, I promise).
An improved point-source microlensing fitter, as well a new finite-source microlensing fitter are in the fitter2/ subdirectory.
StarBase will report the locations of stars within a rectangular region of the CCD. Useful for finding other objects near a star of interest. The number of observations for each object is
also reported. This is useful as DoPHOT tends to introduce false objects so finding the location of the true object is essential if its lightcurve is to be recovered.
StarBase will estimate and store the mean magnitudes of objects in a starfield, after rejecting outliers. Useful for constructing catalogues.
StarBase will construct catalogues using mean object magnitudes which can be used as fixed-position warmstart templates for DoPHOT. Databases made from DAOphot II
photometry produce excellent catalogues which (speedy) DoPHOT can then use.
When the magnitude zeropoint for each frame is estimated the uncertainty in the zeropoint is also estimated (at least for the constant term). This uncertainty can be added in
quadrature with the fitting error produced by DAOphot/DoPHOT when extracting lightcurves from the

avsomat

A small utility to automate the reduction of variable stars,
Version : 0.4

Author(s) : Alexandru ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://astro.corlan.net/avsomat

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 250.64 Kb
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startavsomat

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Summary

This is avsomat, a small utility to automate the reduction
of variable stars, currently for the purpose of reporting them
to AAVSO (www.aavso.org).

BCR

o CDS can often deliver higher network bandwidth, higher memory-
based bandwidth, and lower latency to the application than message
passing interfaces

o CDS supports several programming styles (including demand-driven,
real-time, shared-memory, and message-passing) all with a single
simple API

o CDS uses the programmer's expressed intentions to help hide latency
and minimize copying AT THE SAME TIME, thus making programs more
portable beteen high-latency, low-latency, and hybrid (e.g. cluster
of SMP) environments than they would be with message-passing or
shared-memory APIs.

BCR is Elepar's newly-available C-based CDS offering, a simplified
dialect similar to that developed earlier at NASA Ames Research Center.
Free information, including some performance data and a "Principles of
Operation" white paper, is available without registration at:
http://www.elepar.com/CDS/product.html

camsource

camsource grabs images from a video4linux device
Version : 0.7

Author(s) : [email protected]

License : GPL

Website : http://sourceforge.net/projects/camsource

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 722.49 Kb

Summary

In short, camsource grabs images from a video4linux device and makes them available to various plugins for processing or handling. It features a modularized and multithreaded design to offer a large amount of flexibility. A server plugin runs in its own thread, which makes it possible to use the same grabbed frame for several purposes at the same time. There are also filter plugins, which can be daisychained to create useful and no-so-useful effects in images. The configuration happens through an xml config file, hopefully making configuring camsource an easy task.

ccdview

ST-x and FITS (CCD) image viewer
Version : Feb20-2002

Author(s) : Miroslav Broz ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://www.astrohk.cz/ccdview/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 270.83 Kb
This package is installed using rpm
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startccdview

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Summary

CCDVIEW reads SBIG ST-x and FITS images (probably taken by CCD cameras) and displays them in Xwindow. It also may perform simple photometry, astrometry, display histogram, zoom window, star profiles, change color palettes, export GIF and PostScript.

cdc

Cartes de ciel is a skychart program
Version : 2.76

Author(s) : Patrick Chevalley

License : GPL

Website : http://www.stargazing.net/astropc/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 27.82 Mb
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startcdc

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

The purpose of this program is to prepare different sky maps for a particular observation.
A large number of parameters help you to choose specifically or automatically which catalogs to use, the colour and the dimension of stars and nebulae, the representation of planets, the display of labels and coordinate grids, the superposition of pictures, the condition of visibility and more.
All these features make this celestial atlas more complete than a conventional planetarium.

celestia

/opt/astro/bin/startcelestia

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Summary

Celestia will start up in a window, and if everything is working
correctly, you'll see Jupiter's moon Io in front of a field of
stars. In the left corner is a welcome message and some information
about your target (Io), your speed, and the current time (Universal
Time, so it'll probably be a few hours off from your computer's clock.)
Right drag the mouse to orbit Io and you should see Jupiter and
some familiar constellations. Left dragging the mouse changes your
orientation too, but the camera rotates about its center instead of
rotating around Io. Rolling the mouse wheel will change your distance
to the space station--you can move light years away, then roll the wheel
in the opposite direction to get back to your starting location. If your
mouse lacks a wheel, you can use the Home and End keys instead.

cephes-math

Math library
Version : 1.0

Author(s) : Stephen L. Moshier ([email protected])

License : Free

Website : http://

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 1.67 Mb

Summary

Some software in this archive may be from the book Methods and
Programs for Mathematical Functions (Prentice-Hall, 1989) or
from the Cephes Mathematical Library, a commercial product. In
either event, it is copyrighted by the author. What you see here
may be used freely but it comes with no support or guarantee.

The two known misprints in the book are repaired here in the
source listings for the gamma function and the incomplete beta
integral.

cfh12k

CFH 12K MOSAIC REDUCTION PACKAGE
Version : 1.1

Author(s) : Various

License : Free

Website : http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/Instruments/Imaging/CFH12K/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 16.12 Kb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

The CFH12K external package is used to reduce CFH 12K CCD mosaic data.
It provides a task for updating the raw headers to work with the MSCRED
package and a task to set the default parameters. The reductions are
then done using the MSCRED Mosaic reduction package.

cfitsio

C library for read/write FITS format files
Version : 2.4.10

Author(s) : William D. Pence ([email protected])

License : cfitsio

Website : http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/fitsio/fitsio.html

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 10.69 Mb
The following printable documents will be installed :
/opt/astro/doc/cfitsio.ps

Summary

CFITSIO is a library of ANSI C routines for reading and writing FITS
format data files. A set of Fortran-callable wrapper routines are also
included for the convenience of Fortran programmers. This README file
gives a brief summary of how to build and test CFITSIO, but the CFITSIO
User's Guide, found in the files cfitsio.doc (plain text), cfitsio.tex
(LaTeX source file), or cfitsio.ps (postscript format), should be
referenced for the latest and most complete information.

CHIANTI

A Database for Astrophysical Emission Line Spectroscopy
Version : 4.2

Author(s) : Enrico Landi ([email protected])

License : Free

Website : http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/astro/chianti/chianti.html

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 3

Disk space required for installation is 10.48 Mb
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startCHIANTI

Screenshots

The continued development of the CHIANTI database is dependent on continued funding which is generally available if we can demonstrate that the CHIANTI
database is of use to astrophysical research. If you find CHIANTI useful, it would be helpful to us if you could email a short description (a single sentence is fine) of how
you employ CHIANTI.

We are also aware that CHIANTI data is being ingested into other databases and this is fine. However, it would be useful for us if some acknowledgement of this use of
CHIANTI can be given, such as in publications etc.

cloudy

Simulate emission line regions
Version : 96

Author(s) : Gary J. Ferland. ([email protected])

License : cloudy

Website : http://www.nublado.org

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 3

Disk space required for installation is 36.85 Mb
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startcloudy

Screenshots

Cloudy is designed to simulate emission line regions ranging
from the intergalactic medium to the Broad Line regions of
Quasars. It can be used to predict either the structure or
the observed spectrum from such regions.

cmbfast

/opt/astro/bin/startcmbfast

Screenshots

CMBFAST is the most extensively used code for computing cosmic microwave background anisotropy, polarization and matter power spectra. This package contains cosmological
linear perturbation theory code to compute the evolution of various cosmological matter and radiation components, both today and at high redshift. The code has been tested over a wide range
of cosmological parameters. We are continuously testing and updating the code based on suggestions from the cosmological community.

color

IRAF Tools for Color Image Display
Version : 4

Author(s) : Frank Valdes ([email protected])

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 2.18 Mb

Screenshots

A prototype IRAF color image display package, COLOR, is now available.
Currently this package provides conversion of 3 bandpass IRAF images to a
Sun 24-bit RGB rasterfile format, a 24-bit to 8-bit compression algorithm
and Floyd-Steinberg dithering, and an RGB 8-bit pixel dithering algorithm.
The Sun rasterfiles are displayed using non-IRAF tools and the others use
only IRAF images and SAOimage or IMTOOL. These tasks are usable with the
currently common 8-bit color workstations and are provided for those users
which don't have more capable hardware such as 24-bit workstations, IIS
displays, and 24-bit addon cards. Addtional functionality will be added to
the COLOR package in time.

The task RGBSUN takes three input IRAF images and produces a 24-bit Sun
rasterfile. Though this file type was developed by Sun Microsystems it is
a relatively simple format which may useful on other machines having
software designed to use it. The color image may be displayed with a variety
of non-IRAF tools such as XV (a very powerful and generic viewer for
X-window systems), XLOADIMAGE (another X-window display tool), SCREENLOAD
(a simple displayer on Sun computers), and SNAPSHOT (an Open-Look tool).
Also some color printers can be used with this format such as a Shinko
color printer.

cora

line fitting tool designed for emission line spectra with low count numbers
Version : 3.2

Author(s) : Jan-Uwe Ness - ([email protected]) , Rainer Wichmann - ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://www.hs.uni-hamburg.de/DE/Ins/Per/Ness/Cora/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 3

Disk space required for installation is 8.11 Mb
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startcora

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

Summary

The cora line fitting package consists of seven programs. Help on command line options can be obtained with the option -h.

   cora_fit - this is the main fitting program. It can be used as a standalone command-line application, or it can be used from the graphical user interface. 
   cora_fit requires a parameter file, and a spectrum. 
   cora - this is the optional graphical user interface, which acts as a graphical front-end to cora_fit, and significantly facilitates the use of the latter. Basically, with cora you can: 
          browse the spectrum and interactively choose lines to fit 
          interactively set all parameters required by cora_fit, 
          easily switch between different parameter settings, 
          call cora_fit with the currently selected parameter settings 
          obtain updated parameters and graphical output (i.e. plots). 
   cora_inp - this is a helper application that writes a parameter file (see below) that is specifically adapted to a particular spectrum. This program is useful if you do not use the GUI. It
   is also used by the GUI itself. 
   cora_spec - a small program to create an artificial spectrum with a few lines; for testing purposes. 
   cora_rgs - converts a fits data file in the format returned by the XMM SAS task rgsproc into a CORA file 
   cora_tex - converts the log file into a LATEX table 
   cora_flux - creates a data file in the CORA format with fluxes using a given file with effective areas (two columns: wavelengths, area in cm) and exposure time. WARNING: Not
   recommended for obtaining line fluxes with CORA. 

In addition, two scripts are provided with the package.

   cora_setup.ksh and cora_setup.tcsh can be modified to your system and executed in order to set environment variables. This customizes the installation. 
   cora_rgspipe.sh will reduce XMM-RGS data using the SAS software. The user has to modify environment variables indicating where SAS is installed and where the data to be
   processed are located. 

cosmics

/opt/astro/bin/startcosmics

Screenshots

Summary

COSMICS is a package of programs for computing cosmological initial
conditions for nonlinear structure formation codes as well as microwave
background anisotropy. For detailed information please read cosmics.tex
(cosmics.ps).

cosmix

/opt/astro/bin/startcosmix

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

This is the first early release of COSMIX. It currently
only supports Newtonian dynamics with point objects. This
release is essentially intended to help with 2 things:

    - debugging: I hope users will help me identify
    bugs by using COSMIX. Detailed bug reports are
    more than welcome.

    - developpement: I need to know how users would
    like COSMIX to be, both in terms of inteface and
    features. Please allow yourself to dream on the
    ideal general N body simulator and tutorial and
    send me your ideas...

crutil

COSMIC RAY REMOVAL UTILITY PACKAGE
Version : 1.4

Author(s) : Frank Valdes ([email protected])

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 1.68 Mb

Summary

The cosmic ray package provides tools for identifying and removing cosmic
rays in images. The tasks are:

cosmicrays - Remove cosmic rays using flux ratio algorithm
craverage - Detect CRs against average and avoid objects
crcombine - Combine multiple exposures to eliminate cosmic rays
credit - Interactively edit cosmic rays using an image display
crfix - Fix cosmic rays in images using cosmic ray masks
crgrow - Grow cosmic rays in cosmic ray masks
crmedian - Detect and replace cosmic rays with median filter
crnebula - Detect and replace cosmic rays in nebular data

The best way to remove cosmic rays is using multiple exposures of the same
field. When this is done the task crcombine is used to combine the
exposures into a final single image with cosmic rays removed. The images
are scaled (if necessary) to a common data level either by multiplicative
scaling, an additive background offset, or some combination of both.
Cosmic rays are then found as pixels which differ by some statistical
amount away for the average or median of the data.

A median is the simplest way to remove cosmic rays. This is an option
with crcombine. But this does not make optimal use of the data.
An average of the pixels remaining after some rejection operation is better.
If the noise characteristics of the data can be described by a gain and
read noise then cosmic rays can be optimally rejected using the
"crreject" algorithm. This works on two or more images. There are
a number of other rejection algorithms which can be used as described in
the task help.

The rest of the tasks in the package are used when only a single exposure
is available. These include interactive editing with credit. The
replacement algorithms in this task may also be used non-interactively if
you have a list of pixel coordinates as input. Other tasks automatically
identifying pixels which are significantly higher than surrounding pixels.

ctio

IRAF Tools for CTIO telescope data
Version : 4

Author(s) : Frank Valdes ([email protected])

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 9.98 Mb

Summary

ctio.amplot - Plot critical airmass versus UT
ctio.apropos - List all the tasks related with a given subject
ctio.bin2iraf - Convert binary files into IRAF images
ctio.bitstat - Perform bit statistics of image frames
ctio.chpixfile - Change pixel file name in image headers
ctio.colselect - Extract selected columns from a list.
ctio.compairmass - Compute air mass
ctio.compression.fitsread - Create an IRAF image from a compressed FITS file.
ctio.compression.fitswrite - Create a compressed FITS file from an IRAF image.
ctio.compression.imcompress - Compress IRAF image pixel file
ctio.compression.imuncompress - Uncompress IRAF image pixel files
ctio.coords - Compute celestial coordinates
ctio.cureval - Evaluate the fit computed by curfit.
ctio.dfits - display FITS file headers
ctio.eqwidths - Equivalent widths
ctio.ezimtool - Call IRAF tasks interactivelly from image cursor mode
ctio.fabry.avgvel - determine velocity by averaging pixels
ctio.fabry.findsky - determine the sky levels at each band of an image cube
ctio.fabry.fitring - compute the dispersion solution using the ring parameters
ctio.fabry.fpspec - Plot pixel value for a set of images
ctio.fabry.icntr - determine centers for a star in a set of images
ctio.fabry.icur - get image cursor coordinates
ctio.fabry.intvel - determine velocity by averaging pixels interactively
ctio.fabry.mkcube - combine a group of 2D images into an image cube
ctio.fabry.mkshift - generate a script file to shift many images to a reference image
ctio.fabry.normalize - add normalization factors to the cube image header
ctio.fabry.ringpars - determine the parameters of the calibration rings
ctio.fabry.velocity - construct velocity maps from the fabry-perot image cube
ctio.fabry.zeropt - determine the zero point in wavelength for each band in the cube
ctio.fft1d - One dimensional Fast Fourier Transform
ctio.filecalc - File calculator
ctio.findfiles - Find files
ctio.fitrad - Fit a function to circular image subrasters
ctio.fixtail - Fix last image lines or columns.
ctio.focus - Compute telescope focus
ctio.gki2cad - Convert GKI metacode files into autoCAD DXF files
ctio.gkitocad - Convert GKI metacode files into autoCAD DXF files
ctio.growthcurve - Correct magnitudes using the growth curve for them
ctio.imcreate - Create an image.
ctio.imextract - Extract a list of image sections from an image
ctio.immatch - Match one or two dimensional images
ctio.imsort - Sort images by header parameter values
ctio.imspace - determine disk space used by IRAF images.
ctio.imtest - test image headers an pixel files
ctio.iraf2bin - Convert IRAF images into binary files
ctio.irlincor - Correct IR imager frames for non-linearity.
ctio.irproc - Sky substract, transpose, and mosaic IR imager frames
ctio.lambda - Print pixel values and wavelengths
ctio.magavg - Average output from magband for a single object
ctio.magband - Compute the average magnitude for a list of bandpasses
ctio.mapkeyword - Replace image header keyword values with other values.
ctio.midut - Compute UT for midpoint of observation
ctio.mjoin - Join lines in text files by matching them
ctio.mkapropos - make the apropos database
ctio.pixselect - List pixel values within a certain range
ctio.spcombine - Combine spectra interactively
ctio.sphot - star photometry
ctio.statspec - Compute statistical error spectra from object and sky spectra.
ctio.wairmass - Compute weighted airmass

cutout

extract FITS cutout images from a survey using world coordinate information
Version : 2000.12

Author(s) : Various

License : Free

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 575.51 Kb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

The CUTOUT task extracts FITS cutout images from a list of survey images input and
writes the output images to output. The survey images are described in the
database file dbfile which is created or updated when CUTOUT is run with opmode
="scan".

 The database file contains a description of every survey image. At present this
 description includes the name of the image, the filter id, the right ascension and
 declination of the image center in hours and degrees, the coordinate system of the
 image, the size of the image in pixels, the image projection type, the coordinates
 of the projection reference point in degrees and degrees, the coordinates of the
 reference point in pixels and pixels, the x and y image scale in "/pixel, the x
 and y axes rotation in degrees, and the image extent in ra and dec in degrees and
 degrees. The database filter ids are read from the image keyword defined by the
 kwfilter parameter.

 A single cutout region is specified by the ra, dec, rawidth, decwidth, fcsystem,
 and filters parameters. Multiple cutout regions may be defined in the regions file
 regions which has the following format.

ra1 dec1 ra/xwidth1 [dec/ywidth1 [fcsystem1 [filters1]]]
ra2 dec2 ra/xwidth2 [dec/ywidth2 [fcsystem2 [filters2]]]
...
raN decN ra/xwidthN [dec/ywidthN [fcsystemN [filtersN]]]

 The right ascension and declination values define the center of the extraction
 region and must be hours and degrees. The right ascension and declination widths
 must be in arcminutes. The x and y widths must be in pixels. X and Y pixel width
 values are distinguished from ra and dec width values by a trailing 'p' character.
 The decwidth / ywidth, coordinate system, and filter id values are optional, and
 default to the value of rawidth, and the values of the fcsystem and filters
 parameters respectively.

 If opmode = "list" then the names, offsets from the extraction region center in
 arcminutes or pixels, and filter ids are printed on the screen.

 If opmode = "cutout" the FITS image cutouts output are created, one cutout for
 each filter in filters. If cutmode = "largest" the cutout is extracted from the
 survey image which has the largest overlap with the extraction region. If cutmode
 is "collage" then the cutouts are created from all the images which overlap the
 extraction regions, with images with larger overlap regions taking precedence over
 those with smaller overlap regions. The survey images are assumed to have a common
 projection system and cutouts are aligned to the nearest pixel. Undefined pixels
 in the cutouts are assigned the value blank. If trim = yes then undefined pixels
 around the edges of the cutout images are removed.

 By default the cutout image names are of the form "imroot_coords_filter.fits"
 where  imroot  is the values of the parameter imroot, coords is an IAU-like
 coordinate designation, and filter is the filter id. Users can also specify their
 own output image names in output. If there are more output images than output
 image names then default output image names are constructed for the "extra"
 images.

deitab

DEIMOS TABLE FORMAT TOOLS
Version : 1.1

Author(s) : Various

License : Free

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 728.34 Kb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

The DEITAB external package is used to convert Deimos pipeline reduced
2D table format to multiextension image format. It also allows applying
the 2D pipeline reduced dispersion solution to extracted 1D spectra.

demo_data_for_midas

European Southern Observatory Munich Image Data Analysis System
Version : 05FEBp11.2

Author(s) : ESO

License : GPL

Website : http://www.eso.org/projects/esomidas/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 331.30 Mb

Summary

The ESO-MIDAS system provides general tools for image processing and data reduction with emphasis on astronomical applications including imaging and special reduction packages for
ESO instrumentation at La Silla and the VLT at Paranal. In addition it contains applications packages for stellar and surface photometry, image sharpening and decomposition, statistics and
various others.

Dexter

However, by implementing different classes implementing the ImageGetter
and DataDeliverer classes, standalone versions can be provided. The
PlainImageGetter and PlainDataDeliverer classes show how one would
go about doing that with a main program named Debuxter.

digiphotx

Photometry package for IRAF
Version : 1.0

Author(s) : [email protected]

License : Free

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 6.74 Mb
This package requires prior installation of IRAF

Summary

The IRAF external package, DIGIPHOTX (a new version of the DIGIPHOT package),
is being made available prior to its official release in IRAF 2.10.3.
DIGIPHOTX contains: 1) a new version of the DAOPHOT package, DAOPHOTX, which
is the IRAF implementation of Peter Stetson's DAOPHOT II package, 2) a new
curve of growth analysis task in the PHOTCALX package, 3) several new tasks
in the PTOOLSX package, 4) minor enhancements and bug fixes to existing
tasks that have been discovered since the last exported version.

The installation instructions that follow describe how to retrieve the
DIGIPHOTX archive file, unpack the source files, build, and link the
package. If your IRAF system has been stripped of the IRAF libraries (via
'mkpkg stripall') you will not be able to build the DIGIPHOTX executable as
described here. You must either reload the required libraries or request
a binary distribution of DIGIPHOTX for your operating system.

Some DIGIPHOTX tasks make use of the STSDAS TABLES package library routines.
In order to successfully link all the DIGIPHOTX executables, the STSDAS
TABLES package must be installed. A copy of the ST TABLES package
retrieval and installation instructions is included at the end of the file.

ds9

/opt/astro/bin/startds9

Screenshots

   DS9 supports advanced features such as multiple frame buffers, mosaic images, tiling, blinking, geometric markers, colormap manipulation, scaling, arbitrary
   zoom, rotation, pan, and a variety of coordinate systems (including Image, Physical, Detector, and WCS). DS9 also supports FTP and HTTP access. The GUI for
   DS9 is user configurable. 

dusty

/opt/astro/bin/startdusty

The following printable documents will be installed :
/opt/astro/doc/dusty.ps

Summary

DUSTY solves the problem of radiation transport in a dusty environment. The code can handle both spherical and planar geometries. The user specifies the properties of the radiation source
and dusty region, and the code calculates the dust temperature distribution and the radiation field in it. The solution method is based on a self-consistent equation for the radiative energy
density, including dust scattering, absorption and emission, and does not introduce any approximations. The solution is exact to within the specified numerical accuracy.

DUSTY has built in optical properties for the most common types of astronomical dust and comes with a library for many other grains. It supports various analytical forms for the density
distribution, and can perform a full dynamical calculation for radiatively driven winds around AGB stars. The spectral energy distribution of the source can be specified analytically as either
Planckian or broken power-law. In addition, arbitrary dust optical properties, density distributions and external radiation can be entered in user supplied files. Furthermore, the wavelength grid
can be modified to accommodate spectral features. A single DUSTY run can process an unlimited number of models, with each input set producing a run of optical depths, as specified. The
user controls the detail level of the output, which can include both spectral and imaging properties as well as other quantities of interest.

eclipse

/opt/astro/bin/starteclipse

Screenshots

Summary

eclipse is not IRAF. It is a data reduction engine written in C for portability and speed reasons. From this C library, the ISAAC pipeline team has built a number of Unix commands
that are specialized for ISAAC imaging and spectroscopy data processing. We have put into it the know-how of the instrument scientist, and many other contributing people. We do
believe that what is actually done by these routines is representative of what most people will want to do with the data.

   You do not "learn" eclipse. The commands are more or less dedicated, one per template. What you have to learn is more or less similar to learning new IRAF commands (what to put
   in 'epar', how to launch it, learn what is happening in the algorithm, etc.). You do not have to learn a new language, because what it takes is launching a Unix command, not more. 

   Now, if you think you have better routines, IRAF scripts or whatever, you will probably be more efficient with tools you have written, you know where they fail and where they work. If
   you have no clue about ISAAC data reduction or if what you want to do is already performed by an eclipse command, you will be faster and more efficient using it. If you want to do
   something non-trivial that is not supported in the eclipse commands, or if you need any kind of interactive algorithm, you have no choice but use interactive environments like IRAF.
   Anyway, past some point you will need something like IRAF to interact with your data to see what is in there. eclipse only covers the first stages of data reduction, until an
   astronomical knowledge of the data is required to go further. Then it is the astronomer's job and no software can do it in your place.

egodata

Reference data set for the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) spectrometers.
Version : 1.17

Author(s) : Various

License : Free

Website : http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/euve/euve.html

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 1.83 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

The reference data set consists of calibration information, in addition to
detector characteristics. These data are intended for use with the
IRAF layered package EUV, which is also provided by the EUVE program.
All files are either simple ASCII texts files, NASA standard FITS
files, or IRAF pixel list files. Don't forget to convert the FITS
tables to ST tables before using the reference data set.

This reference data set requires EUV version 1.9 or later.

eis

IRAF Tools for ESO imaging survey data
Version : 4

Author(s) : Richard Hook in conjunction with the EIS team

License : ESO

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 1.63 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Screenshots

This version is somewhat specific to the ESO Imaging Survey (EIS) and
the following public surveys and may not be suitable for other data.

When coadding EIS images suitable scripts are usually prepared using
the "parapredriz" task and "drizzle" is not run directly. It is recommended
that this route be followed.

Note that later versions have been optimised for maximum speed by
using a constant kernel - a square on the output grid, aligned with the
pixels. This makes the process faster with a minimal loss of quality.

Drizzling takes the input pixel grid and associates with each pixel a square
region (a drop) whose size can vary between that of the original input
pixel (pixfrac = 1.) down to a point (pixfrac=0). With uniform, equal
weight images pixfrac=1 is equivalent to "shift-and-add".
If the shifts and pixfrac are arranged so only one input pixel is drizzled
onto an output
pixel, the method is equivalent to interlacing. For EIS, where the
data is well-sampled in all but the most exceptionally good seeing, a value
of pixfrac=1.0 is used.

emb

/opt/astro/bin/startemb

Summary

Earth-Moon barycenter calculator

esowfi

ESO WFI MOSAIC REDUCTION PACKAGE
Version : Sep00

Author(s) : NOAO IRAF team ([email protected])

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 81.00 Kb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Screenshots

DISCLAIMER
The package is provided as a service to IRAF users with ESO WFI data.
It was developed and is supported by the IRAF Group at NOAO. The
European Southern Observatory is in no way responsible for this

eSTAR

                                    eSTAR is a joint project between the Astrophysics Research Institute at Liverpool John Moores University, the Astrophysics Rearch Group
                                    of the School of Physics at the University of Exeter and the Department of Physics at the University of Liverpool. It is funded as a
                                    demonstrator project through the UK's joint Department of Trade and Industry and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's
                                    e-science core programme.

                                    Work is ongoing on the software front, some of the middleware written by the project that we feel will be generally useful will be distributed to
                                    the community under the GNU General Public License (GPL).


                                    Astro::ADS

                                    The Astro::ADS module is an object-orientated Perl interface to the Astrophysics Data System (ADS) abstract service. The ADS is a
                                    NASA-funded project whose main resource is an Abstract Service, which includes four sets of abstracts: astronomy and astrophysics,
                                    instrumentation, physics and geophysics, and Los Alamos preprint server.

                                    As of November 2001, ADS discontinued support of its own adswww Perl4 based library, in favour of the Astro::ADS module. It is therefore
                                    now the official way to access ADS via the Perl language.

                                    Astro::SIMBAD

                                    The Astro::SIMBAD module is an object-orientated Perl interface to the SIMBAD astronomical database. SIMBAD provides basic data,
                                    cross-identifications and bibliography for astronomical objects outside the solar system.

                                    Astro::DSS

                                    The Astro::DSS module is an object-orientated Perl interface to the first and second Digital Sky Surveys at the ESO-ECF online archive.
                                    While the first sky survey is 100% complete, the second survey covers 98% of the sky in Red, 45% of the sky in Blue and 27% of the sky in
                                    the Infra-red.

                                    Astro::Corlate

                                    The Astro::Corlate module is an pseudo-object orientated interface to the Fortran 95 Corlate package. A F95 compiler is needed to compile
                                    the module.

                                    Corlate compares two CLUSTER format catalogue files, one typically being the results of a new observation, and the other a reference
                                    catalogue such as the USNO-A2. It returns an array of files with information on any variable objects found during the cross-corelation of the
                                    two catalogues. CLUSTER format files can be handled using the Astro::Catalog.

                                    Astro::Catalog

                                    A generic catalog object, along with wrappers to allow you to connect to the online Guide Star Catalogue (GSC) and the USNO-A2 catalogue
                                    provided by ESO/ST-ECF. The module also allows read/write access to ARK CLUSTER files.

                                    eSTAR::Globus

                                    A skeleton module demonstrating how we went about wrapping the Globus API in Perl. Requires that Globus is installed.

                                    eSTAR::LDAP::Search

                                    The Globus Perl CoG module Grid::Info::Search, customised for use with the eSTAR project. Requires that Globus is installed.

                                    eSTAR::RTML

                                    A module which parses Robotic Telescope Markup Language (RTML) which is the communication protocol used between the agent and the
                                    node.

                                    Intelligent Agent

                                    The current release includes only the testbed clients for the intelligent agent (IA). The Field Correlation Client (FCC) is the current testbed
                                    for the low level and middleware Perl classes and wrappers underpinning the intelligent agent (IA) software.

euv

IRAF Tools for EUV data reduction
Version : 1.9

Author(s) : Center for EUV Astrophysics

License : euv

Website : http://www.hypography.com/info.cfm/15292.html

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 16.28 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

The Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) was a NASA-funded astronomy mission operating in the relatively unexplored extreme ultraviolet (70-760 Å) band. The science payload, which
has been designed and built at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, under the direction of Dr. Roger F. Malina, consists of three grazing incidence
scanning telescopes and an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectrometer/deep survey instrument. The science payload is attached to a Multi-Mission Modular spacecraft.

The EUVE mission, which launched on June 7, 1992 on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral, is the culmination of nearly thirty years of effort at the University of California at
Berkeley to create the field of EUV Astronomy. EUVE opens up this last unexplored spectral window in astrophysics.

The first six months of the mission were dedicated to mapping the EUV sky with the scanning telescopes. The mission is now in the Guest Observer phase.

Contents Previous Next

eye

/opt/astro/bin/starteye

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu
The following printable documents will be installed :
/opt/astro/doc/eye.ps

Summary

Eye is a program which generates non-linear image filters using
machine learning. The resulting filter can then be loaded in
Sextractor.

fftw

FFTW is usually faster (and sometimes much faster) than all other freely-available Fourier transform programs found on the Net. For transforms whose size is a power of two, it compares
favorably with the FFT codes in Sun's Performance Library and IBM's ESSL library, which are targeted at specific machines. Moreover, FFTW's performance is portable. Indeed, FFTW is
unique in that it automatically adapts itself to your machine, your cache, the size of your memory, the number of registers, and all the other factors that normally make it impossible to optimize
a program for more than one machine. An extensive comparison of FFTW's performance with that of other Fourier transform codes has been made. The results are available on the Web at the
benchFFT home page.

In order to use FFTW effectively, you need to understand one basic concept of FFTW's internal structure. FFTW does not used a fixed algorithm for computing the transform, but it can adapt
the DFT algorithm to details of the underlying hardware in order to achieve best performance. Hence, the computation of the transform is split into two phases. First, FFTW's planner is
called, which "learns" the fastest way to compute the transform on your machine. The planner produces a data structure called a plan that contains this information. Subsequently, the plan is
passed to FFTW's executor, along with an array of input data. The executor computes the actual transform, as dictated by the plan. The plan can be reused as many times as needed. In
typical high-performance applications, many transforms of the same size are computed, and consequently a relatively-expensive initialization of this sort is acceptable. On the other hand, if
you need a single transform of a given size, the one-time cost of the planner becomes significant. For this case, FFTW provides fast planners based on heuristics or on previously computed
plans.

The pattern of planning/execution applies to all four operation modes of FFTW, that is, I) one-dimensional complex transforms (FFTW), II) multi-dimensional complex transforms
(FFTWND), III) one-dimensional transforms of real data (RFFTW), IV) multi-dimensional transforms of real data (RFFTWND). Each mode comes with its own planner and executor.

Besides the automatic performance adaptation performed by the planner, it is also possible for advanced users to customize FFTW for their special needs. As distributed, FFTW works most
efficiently for arrays whose size can be factored into small primes (2, 3, 5, and 7), and uses a slower general-purpose routine for other factors. FFTW, however, comes with a code generator
that can produce fast C programs for any particular array size you may care about. For example, if you need transforms of size 513 = 19*33, you can customize FFTW to support the factor 19
efficiently.

FFTW can exploit multiple processors if you have them. FFTW comes with a shared-memory implementation on top of POSIX (and similar) threads, as well as a distributed-memory
implementation based on MPI. We also provide an experimental parallel implementation written in Cilk, the superior programming tool of choice for discriminating hackers (Olin Shivers). (See
the Cilk home page.)

finder

IRAF catalog search tools
Version : 2.2

Author(s) : Frank Valdes ([email protected])

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 4.36 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

Catalog search tools

finder.catpars - Catalog description pset for the finder package
finder.cdrfits - modified version of strfits
finder.disppars - finder package image display parameters
finder.dssfinder - TFINDER tailored for Digital Sky Survey images
finder.finderlog - generate a text log file from a tfinder table
finder.gscfind - search the index of the GSC for regions overlapping a field
finder.mkgscindex - unpack a GSC FITS format index into a table
finder.mkgsctab - Make a GSC format table from a text coordinate list
finder.mkobjtab - convert objects on input to catalog sources on output
finder.objlist - print a text listing of TFINDER object coordinate
finder.selectpars - pset containing registration source selection criteria
finder.tastrom - perform a plate solution given a table of coordinates
finder.tfield - extract a field and predict X,Y positions from GSC tables
finder.tfinder - search the GSC catalog - predict, center {&} fit coords
finder.tpltsol - perform a plate solution given a table of coordinates

fitsutil

IRAF FITS utilities
Version : Dec99

Author(s) : Nelson Zarate ([email protected])

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 1.59 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

The MEF interface is a set of routines to manipulate single FITS files
or Multiple Extensions FITS files. This interface complies with the
FITS standard set by the NOST document.

foucault

/opt/astro/bin/startfoucault

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

Traditionally, amateur mirror makers use a Couder screen, nimble
fingers and keen eyesight to quantify the results of the Foucault
test by finding the exact knife locations where a zone is equally
illuminated on the opposite sides of a mirror.

In this day and age, however, sophisticated illumination detectors (i.e.
digital cameras) are inexpensive and readily available, thus eliminating the
dependence on a highly subjective illumination comparison with the
naked eye. This program, furthermore, eliminates
the need for accurate knife position measurement. Simply take a sequence
of photos at pre-set knife offsets, which need not be known with
great accuracy, and let the software reduce the measurements
and fit the theoretical illumination curves to best match the data.

ftools

/opt/astro/bin/startftools

Screenshots

Summary

FTOOLS is a collection of utility programs used to create, examine, or modify the contents of FITS data files. There are also user friendly GUI tools which allow interactive browsing of FITS files and provide
a more intuitive interface for running the FTOOLS. The FTOOLS package forms the core of the
HEASARC software system for reducing and analyzing data in the FITS format.

                 Each FTOOLS task is a separate program that performs a single simple operation. The FTOOLS are
                 primarily a Unix based package, although a Windows version was created for version 4.2 (a 5.0
                 version is in the works). Most of the powerful GUI interfaces run only on Unix, although the core GUI
                 tool, fv, is available for Unix, Windows, and MacOS. Further discussion of supported platforms is
                 available in the FTOOLS FAQ. Scripts are available for combining several FTOOLS to perform
                 complex tasks. All of the core FTOOLS programs share several common design features: 

                        All are written in ANSI Fortran or C; 
                        All use a simple standardized subroutine interface for getting the value of program parameters
                        (e.g., the name of the input FITS file), and; 
                        All data I/O is restricted to FITS files via the FITSIO subroutine interface (or to simple ASCII
                        format in certain cases). 
                        All scripts are written in Perl5 (although many will work in Perl4). Note: The official Perl5.001
                        release doesn't work with all ftools scripts (due to a bug in the Perl code). To run ftools perl
                        scripts, you will need "unofficial patchlevel" 5.001m or higher. 
                        The GUI tools are written in Tcl/Tk: Currently there are fv (an interactive FITS file
                        browser/editor), flaunch (a powerful GUI interface to the FTOOLS), and xdf (the XTE Data
                        Finder). The FTOOLS distribution contains the source for the Tcl/Tk interpreters that these
                        tools need to run and will build them for you. You do not need to install Tcl or Tk separately on
                        your system. 

                 These design decisions have resulted in a software package that is exceptionally portable and can be
                 integrated into new environments with a minimum of modification to the source code.

funtools

Funtools, is a minimal buy-in FITS library and utility package from the SAO/HEAD R&D group.
Version : 1.2.3

Author(s) : SAO/HEAD ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD/funtools/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 3

Disk space required for installation is 127.85 Mb
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startfuntools

Screenshots

We therefore have built a suite of easily mastered tools to promote initial quantitative understanding of astronomical data before moving on to more complex traditional analysis systems. Our
tools are based on a simplified FITS library that offers essential FITS access without the complexity of existing libraries. We also have built a sophisticated region filtering library (compatible
with our SAOtng and IRAF regions) that filters images and tables using boolean operations between geometric shapes, support world coordinates, etc.

gadget

/opt/astro/bin/startgadget

Screenshots

Summary

In its current implementation, the serial and parallel versions of GADGET (GAlaxies with Dark matter and Gas intEracT1) support collisionless simulations and smoothed
particle hydrodynamics on serial or massively parallel computers. While the parallel code required substantial changes in certain parts of the computational algorithms, we have nevertheless
tried to keep the structure of the two codes, and their usuage, as similar as possible. In principle, it would be possible to merge the codes into one source, and employ large numbers of
compiler directives to generate serial or parallel behaviour as desired. However, we think that would make the code much more opaque, and would compromise one of our objectives, which is
to provide a clean, well-documented code that can be easily understood and modified by users. We therefore provide two separate versions of the code, one for serial and one for parallel
computations.

The code can be used for plain Newtonian dynamics, or for cosmological integrations in arbitrary cosmologies, both with or without periodic boundary conditions. The modeling of
hydrodynamics is optional. The code is fully adaptive both in space and in time.

The main reference for numerical and algorithmic aspects of the code is the paper `GADGET: A code for collisionless and gas-dynamical cosmological simulations', Springel, Yoshida &
White, 2000, submitted to New Astronomy (see preprint at astro-ph/0003162). In the following, this paper will be frequently referenced, and I recommend reading it before you attempt to use
the code.

Features

        Hierarchical multipole expansion (tree method) for gravitational forces (geometrical oct-tree, Barnes&Hut-style)

        Optional periodic boundary conditions (Ewald summation technique)

        Smoothed particle hydrodynamics with fully adaptive smoothing lengths

        Shear-reduced artificial viscosity

        Individual timesteps of arbitrary size for all particles

        Work-load balancing and dynamic tree updates

        Efficient cell-opening criteria

        Highly efficient integrator in the linear regime of gravitational clustering

        Flexible control of all code options by a free-format parameterfile

        Portable, well documented code, relying only on standard language/communication features

        High raw computational speed and good scalability

gax

/opt/astro/bin/startgax

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

At first I tried some "commercial" software like Deep Sky Planner,
Hypersky, and even NED online but they weren't very flexible. I also
wanted something free that would run on Linux. So I wrote my own.

The user interface uses the standard Unix philosophy, lots of command
line switches to control program behavior. This resulted in the main
search program, Gax, have quite a few switches and it may be daunting
at first site. Never fear though, the manual page has examples that
let you see some of the possibilities. Also, typing 'gax' gives a
short command synopsis.

If you are using bash then the history feature makes it very easy to
try a search, see the results, and then modify the search parameters.
Also, piping the output to other utilities is a big plus of GUI-based
programs.

The other feature found lacking in the commercial programs was that
their output format was determined by the developer, who apparently has
different likes and dislikes than me. Gax was designed so that you can
specify what the output format looks like to a great extent. I'm
sure that it won't please everyone but I figured that I would put
this program out and see what kind of feedback, if any, I received.

A major goal was for Gax to be fast. Gax has been used on a Toshiba
T4400C laptop with a i486DX2/25Mhz CPU, 20MB RAM and 200MB disk
(100MB for Linux) and Gax is fast even on it.

Obviously, the larger the database you have to search the longer it
is going to take. Gax has the ability to look through a large database,
select certain objects according to your criteria, and create a new
database file with only those objects. By creating these subsets, even
faster searches are possible.

The ASCII input file that is used to create the Gax database file
contains catalog names from the following catalogs:
NGC, IC, Messier, UGC, MCG, ESO, CGCG, Arp, Markarian, VV, PGC

I got the data from the NASA National Space Sciences Data Center in the
Paturel Galaxy Catalog.

When Gax is compiled, a macro defined in the Makefile specifies which
catalog names to keep in the database file. By compiling Gax with
fewer catalog names the database file size is further reduced. Out of
the box, Gax will maintain names for NGC, IC, and Messier galaxies.

Gax is not done. Some of the documented features related to time are
not yet implemented. These are noted on the manual page. At some point
I may get around to it unless someone beats me to it.

I hope that you find this program useful. If so, or you don't like it,
let me know. Comments, Criticisms and Code (C3) welcomed.

gcx

* Open/save 16-bit FITS image files;

  GCX uses floating-point images internally, so other FITS formats are easy to add;
* Zoom/Pan images, adjust brightness/contrast/gamma in an intuitive way, appropiate for astronomical images;
* Convert FITS files to 8-bit PNM after intensity mapping;
* Show image statistics (both global and local);
* Maintain a noise model for the image across transformations; //
* Maintain bad pixel information;
* Perform ccd reductions (dark/bias/flat);
* Automatically align (register) and stack images.

Catalogs and WCS

* Read field star information from GSC1/2 and Tycho2;
* Read object information from edb and native files;
* Read recipe files;
* Detect sources (stars) from images;
* Overlay objects on the image;
* Edit objects' information;
* Match image stars to catalog positions;
* Calculate world coordinates for image objects.

Camera Control

* Control cameras over a TCP socket using a simple protocol;

  The control proces (cpxcntrl) presently supports the cpx3m camera. It can be easily modified to support other cameras.

* Acquire images under script control;
* Set binning/windowing/integration times/temperature;
* Dark frames;
* All acquired frames are fully annotated in their FITS headers;
* Auto-generate descriptive names for files.

Telescope control

* Support LX200 protocol over serial;
* Point telescope under script control;
* Point telescope by object name (if edb catalogs are installed);
* Refine pointing by comparing image star positions with catalogs;

Aperture Photometry

* Do sparse field stellar photometry using fixed circular apertures for stars, annular apertures for sky estimation;
* Aperture sizes fully programmable;
* Multiple sky estimation methods;
* Uses a complex error model thorughout, that takes into account photon shot noise, read noise, noise of the callibration frames and scintillation;
* Report noise estimates for every result;
* Take photometric targets (program and standard stars) from recipe files, or directly from the image;
* Produce a comprehensive report.

Multi-Frame Reductions

* Fit color transformation coefficients from multiple frames;
* Fit extinction coefficients;
* Perform all-sky reductions;
* Generate various plots for data checking;

Interfacing

* Uses plain-ascii files for configuration files, reports and recipies;
* Implements import filters and an output converter to interface with tabular formats;
* Most functions available in batch mode, so the program can be made part of a script.

ggobi

/opt/astro/bin/startggobi

Screenshots

Summary

GGobi is a data visualization system for viewing high-dimensional data and is the next edition of xgobi. It provides a new interface to many of the
features of xgobi, built using Gtk, the GIMP toolkit and provides several new features:
A new, simpler and more modern interface;
Better portability to Microsoft Windows;
Direct access from R Perl and Python;
New input format using XML;
Database (Postgres and MySQL) support;
Works as a Gnumeric plugin;
Plugin mechanism for providing extended functionality and support for additional input sources and formats. Plugins can be implemented in
Java.

gmisc

Miscellaneous Gemini Related Tasks
Version : 2004.04

Author(s) : Various

License : Free

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 1.68 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

GMISC contains the development versions of those Gemini reduction packages,
scripts, and tasks written by the NOAO IRAF group.

god

Gravitational Orbital Dynamics
Version : 1.0

Author(s) : Filippo Portera ([email protected]) , Claudio Rossi ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://dsi.unive.it

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 68.01 Kb
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startgod

Screenshots

MENU BAR

-FILE: SAVE a system to disk, OPEN one previously saved on disk,
or EXIT the program

-NEW: creates a new configuration (see below for more)

-CONFIGURE: configures the system
When you choose this option a new edit window will appear with the current
system. The default editor is joe, but you can change it uncommenting the
appropriate line in the proc called by the config button command.

-ZOOM: zooms a region of the space
2D mode: choose the ZOOM menu-bar option, then select the region to
zoom by clicking the left mouse button in the top-left corner of the region;
move the cursor to the bottom-right corner, then click again. The region
selected will be zoomed to fit the window.
3D mode: sorry, still under development
HOW TO UNZOOM: press the pause button, then the zoom menu button.

CONTROL SECTION

SPINNING CUBE
These three scales set the viewpoint. They are active only in 3D mode.

MODE
These buttons select the display mode: 2D or 3D

SCHEME
These buttons choose the numeric scheme used to compute the objects'
positions. There are 3 schemes: Prof., sucker and art. The first is the
correct one, the others are modifications that generate very interesting
drawings.

PARAMETERS
Gravitational const. : sets the gravitational constant
dt : time step for numeric integration
max acc. : maximum acceleration allowed for the objects

PALETTE
This scale sets the palette of colors to use to draw objects' trajectories

REW/PLAY/PAUSE buttons
The play button starts simulation, or restart it after that the pause button
has been pressed; the pause button suspends simulation (e.g., to change some
parameters); the rew button "rewinds" the system to its initial configuration.

DOMAIN
Entries to set the integration domain

TRACK
You can choose to track trajectories with a color proportional to the VELOCITY
You can choose to track trajectories with a color proportional to the VELOCITY
of the object, to use a different color for each OBJECT, or not to track
trajectories (NONE -- this is not too much interesting, but allows you to
change the viewpoint while the system is running...)

COLLISION
You can choose what have to happen when two objects collide. They may
never collide (treated as 0-dimensional points) have an elastic collision (not
too realistic, but very funny ! :-).

SPACE
This sets the kind of space where the system runs. It can be a real space
(RxR or RxRxR -- depend on the mode selected) or an hipertoroidal space,
that is when an object exits the space from one side it will re-enter it
by the opposite side.

gpredict

/opt/astro/bin/startgpredict

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

Gnome Predict is a real time satellite tracking program for Gnome, based on
the tracking engine of John Magliacane's excellent satellite tracker Predict
(http://www.qsl.net/kd2bd/predict.html). In the beginning (v. 0.1), Gnome
Predict was just a GUI client using Predict's socket interface but as of
version 0.2, the tracking code from Predict has been included directly into
Gnome Predict so the program doesn't need a running Predict server anymore.
This decision has been made due to performance problems using the socket
interface.

Gnome Predict aims to include the following features as we move towards
version 1.0:

    * Be able to track a large number of satellites (only limited by
      the physical memory of the computer)
    * Track for several groundstations, not just one.
    * Show the satellite data using various visualization modules
      (lists, maps, sky, etc.)
    * Predict upcomming passes for the satellites.
    * Automatically update element sets when newer sets are available
    * Control your receiver/transmitter and antenna rotor using the hamlib
      libraries (http://sourceforge.net/projects/hamlib)
    * Advanced schedule manager for unattended monitoring of satellites.
    * Any desirable feature that is missing from other programs (feel
      free to submit your ideas)

gsc-north

gsc-south1

Hubble Guide Star Catalog (south) compressed
Version : 1.0

Author(s) : STSCI

License : Free

Website : http://www.stsci.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 4

Disk space required for installation is 132.16 Mb

Summary

This version of the Guide Star Catalog is a highly compressed
version suitable for use with fast search techniques.

gsc-south2

Hubble Guide Star Catalog (south) compressed
Version : 1.0

Author(s) : STSCI

License : Free

Website : http://www.stsci.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 5

Disk space required for installation is 132.16 Mb

Summary

This version of the Guide Star Catalog is a highly compressed
version suitable for use with fast search techniques.

gsl

Summary

The GNU Scientific Library (GSL) is a collection of routines
for numerical analysis. The routines are written from scratch by the
GSL team (see Section Contributors to GSL) in C, and are
meant to present a modern Applications Programming Interface (API)
for C programmers, while allowing wrappers to be written for very
high level languages.

gstar

gstar is a gtk front-end for the starchart program
Version : 0.01

Author(s) : Allin Cottrell ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 708.08 Kb
A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Summary

gstar is a gtk front-end for the "starchart" program (originally by Alan
Paeth, updated in 1990 by Craig Counterman) which generates high-quality
postscript charts of any chosen region of the sky.

The GUI requires that the gtk libraries (>= 1.2.0) be installed. See
http://www.gtk.org if you want to know more about gtk.

The postscript generator from the original "starchart" suite is included,
in source form, in this package. So are the data files you need to
generate the charts, so this package is self-contained.

See the file INSTALL for installation directions. See README in the
starchart sub-directory for some more info on the starchart program
itself.

guiapps

IRAF GUIs
Version : 1

Author(s) : IRAF team

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 24.30 Mb

Screenshots

XHELP -- a GUI browser for the IRAF help system providing navigation
through the familiar CL package structure and HTML interface, a search
capability, history mechanism, and on-the-fly conversion of help documents
to HTML or PostScript.

xguiphot -- Do aperture photometry on a list of objects through
circular, elliptical, rectangular, or polygonal apertures using a GUI

Spectool -- an interactive one-dimensional spectrum display and
analysis tool. It responds to user input through cursor keys, colon
commands, mouse buttons, menus, push buttons, and other window-style
graphical user interface controls. Its major functions are to display
spectra in a graphical format, to modify them, and to perform various
analysis operations. The display capabilities provide complete control
over the graph format, convenient zoom and panning, graph and spectral
line labeling, and overplotting and stacking of multiple spectra. The
editing functions include pixel editing, arithmetic operations, smoothing
and fitting, and dispersion solutions. Analysis functions include spectral
line measures, profile fitting, radial velocity measurements, and
statistics.

HDF

hh2000

Hitchhiker 2000
Version : 0.7

Author(s) : Aaron Worley ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://hirame.hiram.edu/~worleyam/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 4.51 Mb
This package is installed using rpm

Summary

Hitchhiker 2000 is an astronomical simulation and visualization program;
a digital orrery. It originally started out as a graphics project from
my college studies at Hiram College. I now work on it occasionally in my
spare time. Maybe people will find it interesting or educational or maybe
even useful? Let me know, I always like to hear from people who use my
program.

How to Use Hitchhiker 2000

Use the mouse to change the field of view. Move the mouse pointer over
the window and drag the mouse around in different directions, while
pressing the left mouse button. You'll notice the scene rotates based on
your mouse movements. To zoom in or out, press the right mouse button and
move the mouse up or down. To identify and object (a planet, asteroid,
etc.) on the screen, click on it with the middle mouse button (it my help
to pause the simulation; clicking a moving target can be difficult.)

Notes on the Movie Builder

The movie builder function will create an MPEG-formatted movie file based
on the current Hitchhiker scene. It's currenty very crude; it will be
made more polished in future releases. If you are going to us it, I
suggest running it from an xterm window, so you can watch for error
messages. Basically, you select "start recording" from the menu, then
select "build movie" when you are done recording. Hh2000 will create a
directory "/tmp/hhtmp" and build the movie file in it - the finish file
will be called "/tmp/hhtmp/hh_output.mpg". You can delete the "hhtmp"
directory after the movie is finished building. Hh2000 relies on the MPEG
and libgr-progs packages to build the movie, see the web page for links to
them.

hipparcos

This directory contains two small Fortran programs to process
Hipparcos transit data from CD-ROM (which is assumed to be mounted
at /cdrom). For more details please see:

http://nastol.astro.lu.se/~lennart/TD/

The executables are in /opt/astro/bin and will be automatically
in the user path. They are called td2gf and td2uv.

ifocas

IRAF Tools Faint Object Classification
Version : 3

Author(s) : Frank Valdes ([email protected])

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 4.27 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Screenshots

ifocas.detect - detect images in a field
ifocas.evaluate - evaluate the objects in a catalog
ifocas.resolution - fit resolution templates and make a classification
ifocas.sky - evaluate and set the local sky for objects in a catalog
ifocas.splits - separate merged objects

immatchx

Package of Image Matching and Image Coordinates Tasks
Version : 2001.10

Author(s) : Various

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 1.69 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

The new immatchx package contains those tasks in images.imcoords and
images.immatch which have had major bug fixes or enhancements since 2.11.3
was released. Two new tasks ccget and ccstd are also included. The current
package menu looks like:

ccfind - Generate a matched coordinate list using image wcs information
 ccget - Extract objects from a text file catalog
 ccmap - Compute image plate solutions using matched coordinate lists

ccsetwcs - Create an image wcs from the plate solution
ccstd - Transform from astrometric standard coordinates
cctran - Transform from x-y to ra-dec and vice versa using plate solutions
ccxymatch - Match celestial and pixel coordinate lists using various methods
geomap - Compute geometric transforms using matched coordinate lists
imcctran - Transform from one image celestial wcs to another
psfmatch - Match the point-spread functions of 1-D or 2-D images
skyctran - Transform coordinate lists from one celestial wcs to another
skyxymatch - Generate matched x-y lists using image celestial wcs information
xregister - Register 1-D or 2-D images using x-correlation techniques

indilib

Indiserver only provides convenient port, fork and data steering services.
If desired, a Client may run and connect to INDI Drivers directly.

iraf

Image reduction and Analysis Facility
Version : 2.12

Author(s) : Various

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 313.40 Mb
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startiraf

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Summary

IRAF is the Image Reduction and Analysis Facility, a general purpose software system for the reduction and analysis of
astronomical data. IRAF is written and supported by the IRAF programming group at the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (NOAO) in Tucson, Arizona.
NOAO is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc. under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation

IRAF is the "Image Reduction and Analysis Facility". The main IRAF distribution includes a good selection of programs for general image processing and graphics,
plus a large number of programs for the reduction and analysis of optical and IR astronomy data (the "noao" packages). Other external or layered packages are
available for applications such as data acquisition or handling data from other observatories and wavelength regimes such as the Hubble Space Telescope (optical),
EUVE (extreme ultra-violet), or ROSAT and AXAF (X-ray). These external packages are distributed separately from the main IRAF distribution but can be easily
installed. The IRAF system also includes a complete programming environment for scientific applications, which includes a programmable Command Language
scripting facility, the IMFORT Fortran/C programming interface, and the full SPP/VOS programming environment in which the portable IRAF system and all
applications are written.

iraftex

Iraftex, provides tools for translating IRAF online documentation (*.hlp files) into LaTeX and HTML.
Version : 0.15

Author(s) : Klaus Elmquist Nielsen ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 23.94 Kb

Summary

The IRAF online documentation is written in a language supported by the
lroff formatter inside IRAF. This language is similar to nroff/troff
in the Unix system. Being designed for text output the semantics of the
language is somewhat tied to a current indent counted as the number of
space characters. But the language also have a simple block structure
that matches similar structures in LaTeX and HTML quite nicely.

The aim of this project is to translate the IRAF online documentation into
(sorry) more modern formats like LaTeX and HTML. The translation uses
the block structured part of the language and ignores for most parts the
`number of spaces in the current indent' bias of the language. Most of
the IRAF online documentation can be translated using this approach with
good results.

The motivation for doing this project is to obtain nice looking prints of
the IRAF online documentation. LaTeX was chosen for its high typographic
quality and because the author is already familiar with it. Support for
HTML was added from the beginning of the project because it was easy to
do and could be useful for others. Part of the motivation for doing this
project is that it may be useful to the IRAF user community.

Much of the inspiration for this translation comes from the IRAF V2.11
Release Notes on the IRAF web site (http://iraf.noao.edu).

ISIS

A new method designed for optimal subtraction of two images
with different seeing. Using image subtraction appears to be essential for the full analysis of the microlensing survey images, however a perfect subtraction of two images is not easy as it requires the derivation of an extremely accurate convolution kernel. Some empirical attempts to find the kernel have used the Fourier transform of bright stars, but solving the statistical problem of finding the best kernel solution has never really been tackled. We demonstrate that it is
possible to derive an optimal kernel solution from a simple least square analysis using all the pixels of both images, and also show that it is possible to fit
the differential background variation at the same time. We also show that PSF variations can also be easily handled by the method. To demonstrate the practical
efficiency of the method, we analyzed some images from a Galactic Bulge field monitored by the OGLE II project. We find that the residuals in the subtracted images are very close to the photon noise expectations. We also present some light
curves of variable stars, and show that, despite high crowding levels, we get an error distribution close to that expected from photon noise alone. We thus demonstrate that nearly optimal differential photometry can be achieved even in very crowded fields. We suggest that this algorithm might be particularly important
for microlensing surveys, where the photometric accuracy and completeness levels could be very significantly improved by using this method

There are 3 essential steps to follow to make light curves of variables objects

Image registration

The goal of image registration is to re-map each image on the same grid. The reference system, or common grid is usually one of the image. The output of this procedure will be a FITS image interpolated on the reference grid.

This procedure involve 2 steps:

• Getting the astrometric transform, X=f(x_ref,y_ref )

• Making image interpolation (Bicubic Splines)

Image Subtraction

This is the main program, and the core of the new method presented in the 2 papers. Before you run the code, you need to make a good reference image by stacking some of your best images. Then you can use the image subtraction code to adjust the reference image to the seeing of each individual image (which have been previously registered and interpolated).

The image subtraction code can process the whole frame by small pieces, it is especially useful in case of large images which can be processed with limited memory ressources.

The code has 2 level of rejection for variable objects:

• Checking that each individual star does not show flux variations

• Checking the chi-square for each individual star

The final output of the code will a subtracted image of the flux variation beween the individualimage and the reference frame.

Photometry

This package will make photometry of variable objects by using the subtracted images. The flux of the variable will be calculated using profile fitting photometry at fixed position. As for the image subtraction code, the frame can be also treated by small pieces. The profile of each frame is calculated by making median stacking of a few reference stars.

jday

TESTING:
After the jday and j2d binaries are built, run the
shell script: RunTest to test both of those binaries.

    The PERL examples can be tested with JdayTest.pl

    The dbd - days between dates example can be tested with Testdbd

jday - with no arguments will print out the current Julian date
based on your system clock and timezone. If your
timezone or system clock are inaccurate, the output of
jday will also be inaccurate

justmoon

/opt/astro/bin/startjustmoon

Screenshots

Just Moon (formerly called qmoon) is lunar observing software for
Linux, Zaurus, and potentially other platforms.

Just Moon has a modular UI, and currently can build in three flavors:
gmoon: GTK+
qmoon: qt (2 or 3)
qmoon: qpe (Zaurus, Opie, Familiar)

karma

/opt/astro/bin/startkarma

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

This document is written for Karma version 1.7.3 , which is probably my experimental'' version. Most of this manual will still be relevant to the previously released binary-only (or beta'')
version, since binary releases come every few weeks or so. Full public releases come once or twice a year, so this document may talk about several new things not available in the last public
release of Karma. The programs available at the moment are:

   volume rendering of data cubes <xray> 
   play movies of data cubes <kview> 
   inspecting two cubes at the same time <kview> 
   slice a cube <kslice_3d> 
   superimposing images <khuei> and <kview> 
   interactive position-velocity slices <kpvslice> 
   interactive ``renzograms'' <krenzo> 
   look for expanding shells <kshell> 
   interactive co-ordinate placement <koords> 
   rectangular to polar gridding of images <kpolar> 

kastrhorloge

astronomy program for Linux & KDE.
Version : 2.0.2

Author(s) : Eric Coquelle ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://perso.wanadoo.fr/coquelle/kastrhorloge/index.html

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 976.62 Kb
This package is installed using rpm
This package requires prior installation of kde

Summary

KAstrHorloge is an astronomy program for Linux & KDE. KAstrHorloge has a 10000-star database. For any of these stars or planets, the program can compute its position in the sky from your observation site. It displays the object location both in a map and in terms of coordinates (alpha and delta) For each star or planet you can add your own comments (for example, some physical data or observation comments) and even a CCD image of the object. KAstrHorloge is intuitive and easily to use.

kojac

KOJAC is a set of Java classes implementing optical elements and optics laws in order to build and simulate optical systems. KOJAC is also aimed at
being a demonstrator of optics for educational purposes. It has been developed at the IMT by Olivier Scherler during a training period.

kstars

KStars is a Desktop Planetarium for KDE.
Version : 1.1

Author(s) : Jason Harris ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://edu.kde.org/kstars/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 7.23 Mb
This package requires prior installation of kde

Summary

KStars is a Desktop Planetarium for KDE. It provides an accurate graphical simulation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes 130,000 stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects,all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets and asteroids.

lheasoft

XIMAGE 4.0, XRONOS 5.18, and XSPEC 11.1.0. XANADU 5.1
Version : 5

Author(s) : NASA GSFC

License : Free

Website : http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/lheasoft/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 3

Disk space required for installation is 127.86 Mb

Screenshots

libAstronomy

The libAstronomy Package provides a set of functions for use in
astronomical programs. Target of the package is making available routines
for all purposes by providing function for calculating ephemerides with only
one function call, but also providing all the functions needed to do this to
allow the user to make his own functions if he wants to.

I

libnova

libnova is a general purpose, double precision, celestial mechanics and astronomical calculation library.

The intended audience of libnova is C / C++ programmers, astronomers and anyone else interested in calculating positions of astronomical objects or celestial mechanics. libnova is the calculation engine used by the Nova project and most importantly, is free software.
Features
The current version of libnova can calculate:

* Aberration
* Nutation
* Apparent Position
* Dynamical Time
* Julian Day
* Precession
* Proper Motion
* Sidereal Time
* Solar Coordinates (using VSOP87)
* Coordinate Transformations
* Planetary Positions Mercury - Pluto (Mercury - Neptune using VSOP87)
* Planetary Magnitude, illuminated disk and phase angle.
* Lunar Position (using ELP82), phase angle.
* Elliptic Motion of bodies (Asteroid + Comet positional and orbit data)
* Asteroid + Comet magnitudes
* Parabolic Motion of bodies (Comet positional data)
* Orbit velocities and lengths
* Atmospheric refraction
* Rise, Set and Transit times.
* Semidiameters of the Sun, Moon, Planets and asteroids.
* Angular separation of bodies
* Hyperbolic motion of bodies

MarsProject

/opt/astro/bin/startMarsProject

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

The simulation is a multi-agent artificial society set in a detailed virtual world.

XML configuration files allow the user to modify the simulation properties.

mem0

IRAF Maximum Entropy image restoration tools
Version : C

Author(s) : Dr. Nailong Wu ([email protected])

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 1.32 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

MEM0 was developed by Dr. Nailong Wu while a visiting scientist at NOAO. It
has been tested on several platforms and is believed to be stable. Should
you find any problems or have questions please contact Dr. Nailong Wu via
email at [email protected].

This is a task for 1-D or 2-D image restoration by MEM. In search of the
maximum point of the objective function, the approximate Newton-Raphson method
for optimization is used. Data fit and the total power are controlled by the
Lagrange multipliers \fIalpha\fR and \fIbeta\fR, respectively, to meet the
constraints. (See REFERENCES.)

The program uses a double iteration scheme: the values of \fIalpha\fR and
\fIbeta\fR are changed in the outer iteration, while the inner iteration
is for finding the ME solution for the particular \fIalpha\fR and \fIbeta\fR.

midas

/opt/astro/bin/startmidas

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

The ESO-MIDAS system provides general tools for image processing and data reduction with emphasis on astronomical applications including imaging and special reduction packages for
ESO instrumentation at La Silla and the VLT at Paranal. In addition it contains applications packages for stellar and surface photometry, image sharpening and decomposition, statistics and
various others.

miriad

/opt/astro/bin/startmiriad

Screenshots

Miriad, in particular, supports a number of niche areas. These include calibration and analysis of polarimetric data from the ATCA, multi-frequency synthesis imaging, mosaicing, ATCA pulsar bin mode, and some spectral line observing applications (e.g. Zeeman experiments). The "miriad" shell is a command-line front-end to run Miriad tasks.

The commands that you give it are somewhat AIPS-like.
Unrecognised commands are passed to the host command interpreter, so
you can use the normal host commands within the shell (with occasional
caveats).

mscred

IRAF Tools for Mosaic image processing
Version : 4.5

Author(s) : Frank Valdes ([email protected])

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 16.09 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

The MSCRED external package is used to reduce CCD mosaic data in which
the data is in the mosaic MEF data format.

The data format used by the NOAO Mosaic Data Handling Software (MDHS) is a
multiextension FITS (MEF) file. This format is produced by the the Data
Capture Agent (DCA) when observing with the NOAO Mosaic. The MEF file for
the NOAO Mosaic currently consists of nine FITS header and data units
(HDU). The first HDU, called the primary or global header unit, contains
only header information which is common to all the CCD images. The
remaining eight HDUs, called extensions, contain the images from the eight
CCDs.

The fact that the image data is stored as a FITS file is not significant.
Starting with IRAF V2.11, FITS files consisting of just a single primary
image may be used in the same way as any other IRAF image format. The
significant feature of the mosaic format is its multi-image structure.

With multiextension FITS files you must either use tasks which are
specifically designed to operate on these files as a unit or explicitly
specify the image within the file that is to be operated upon by general
IRAF image processing tasks. The tasks in the \fBmscred\fR package are
designed to operate on the mosaic MEF files and so you only need to specify
the filename.

mtools

MTOOLS package (version 5Mar98) contains a hodge-podge of various IRAF tasks by Jeff Munn
Version : 1.0

Author(s) : Jeff Munn ([email protected])

License : Free

Website : http://

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 1.49 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

The MTOOLS package (version 5Mar98) contains a hodge-podge of various IRAF
tasks by Jeff Munn (send bug reports to [email protected]), combined together
in this one package. Some of these are simply variations of other IRAF tasks.
The package is comprised of the following tasks:

   airchart - Plot airmass curves
      chart - Interactively chart 2-dimensional data
   defitize - Convert all FITS files in currect directory to images
     fitize - Convert all images in current directory to FITS files
     format - Format the standard input and pass it to the standard output
    gki2mng - Convert a GKI metacode file to MONGO input
    mysplot - Version of SPLOT with line identifying features
        pca - Principal components analysis

The tasks span a range of usefulness and robustness, from the silly (fitize,
defitize) to "I couldn't do anything without it" (chart), and from the robust
(chart) to the semi-robust (gki2mng). This distribution was really put
together for old grad-school colleagues, who wanted copies after obtaining
their freedom and flying off to greener pastures. Thus, harbor no illusions
about this being a well supported, elegantly structured, bug free package.
Its simply a collection of tasks which are general in nature and proved
sufficiently useful at some point that they haven't been purged. Its made
available here primarily because of continued interest in the tasks chart,
airchart, and mysplot. Below is a short critique of the usefulness and
robustness of each task:

airchart -- Very useful for planning observing runs. Robust.
chart -- Very useful for maintaining and interacting with simple text
file relational databases. Robust.
defitize/fitize -- Mostless useless. Used primarily when transporting
large numbers of FITS files, but it became much less interesting
once one was able to set imhdr=HDR$, and even less interesting
with the FITS kernel in v2.11. Still useful to copy
directories with ".imh" files across machines with different
byte ordering. Robust.
format -- Outdated. New printf routines in IRAF 2.10 mostly supercede it.
Semi-robust.
gki2mng -- Useful. Doesn't convert everything, but enough that its easy
to generate publication quality plots from IRAF plots.
Semi-robust.
mysplot -- Useful. Robust. Works with 2.11.
pca -- Useful. Robust. Just an IRAF wrapper for Murtaugh and Heck
code.

mx5ccd

In order to image with Linux, two thing are required: camera driver support and a control application. Both are available here. The camera drivers are implemented as kernel device drivers.
These must be built and installed for your specific kernel. The control application uses features of the camera drivers and other accessories such as filter wheels and telescope guiding
interfaces. Two other applications are useful as well. A celestial charting program and an image processing program will improve the ability to acquire and enhance good images. XEphem and
The GIMP are recommended.

Of course Linux is needed. Currently only the 2.2.x kernel is supported by the camera drivers. There are drivers for the Connectix parallel port Quickcam and the Starlight Xpress (MX5/16,
MX5/12, MX5C, ,MX7C, MX9 - HX5 and HX9 untested) series of camers. Adding new drivers is fairly easy, so if you want to add support foryour camera, lookat the current source and send
me some email. The control application, gccd , requires a Gnome installation. Gccd also uses the GDK-PIXBUF library, so make sure it is installed from your distribution. It seems that most
make this library an installation option. You do not need a big or fast computer. I developed this software to run on an anemic 75 Mhz Pentium laptop with 16 MB RAM and 640x480 LCD. It is
equivalent to a circa 1991/1992 desktop. However, the faster your computer, the better your experience. Faster downloads, more screen real-estate, more images in memory are the benefits
of a newer computer.

mxtools

IRAF MX version of Quick and Dirty PHOTometry
Version : 2001.04.11_12:37

Author(s) : Kenneth J. Mighell ([email protected])

License : AURA

Website : http://www.noao.edu/staff/mighell/mxtools

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 11.06 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Screenshots

ncarg

/opt/astro/bin/startncarg

Summary

NCAR Graphics (see also mirror sites below) is thoroughly documented in:

          The introductory user guide to the Ngmath library - a collection of mathematical procedures for which there are equivalent Fortran and C entries.

          The NCAR Graphics GKS manual User's Guide for NCAR GKS-0A Graphics

          Programmer documents for some of the graphical utilities (also known as the Low Level Utilites or LLUs) - these documents are the software developers' reference
          notes and are provided for users who want to explore the information that developers use to maintain a utility's source code. They can also be very helpful to users and
          contain many examples: 

                Areas, A Package that Solves Certain Practical Problems in Topology<BR>
                Autograph, A Package of Routines to Draw X/Y Plots<BR>
                CGM, Graphcap, and Fontcap Supplement<BR>
                Conpack, A Contouring Package<BR>
                Dashpack, A Software Package for Drawing Dashed Lines<BR>
                Ezmap, A Map-Drawing Package<BR>
                Gflash, A Graphics Instruction Manipulation Package<BR>
                Gridal, A Package to Draw Backgrounds for X/Y Plots<BR>
                Isosurface, A Package of Routines used to Draw Isosurfaces<BR>
                Labelbar, A Package of Routines to Draw Labelled Bars<BR>
                Plotchar, A Character-Plotting Package<BR>
                Polypack, A Package of Routines to Manipulate Polygons<BR>
                SPPS, An NCAR System Plot Package Simulator <BR>
                Stitle, A Package to Create Scrolled Movie Titles<BR>
                Seter, A Centralized Error-Handling Package for NCAR Graphics<BR>
                Softfill, A Software Fill Package<BR>
                Streamlines, A Field Flow Visualization Utility<BR>
                Tdpack, A Three-Dimensional Plotting Utility<BR>
                Vectors, A Vector Field Plotting Utility<BR>
                Wmap, A Package for Producing Daily Weather Maps and Plotting Station Model Data<BR>

          The introductory user guide NCAR Graphics Fundamentals - this document contains important information for all users of NCAR Graphics: a glossary of terms,
          explanation of the structure of NCAR Graphics programs, strategies for learning to use NCAR Graphics, instructions for compiling, linking, and running programs,
          instructions for producing and editing output from NCAR Graphics programs, and guidelines for using the utilities. While it also introduces the Fortran interface to
          some of the traditional NCAR Graphics utilities, we recommend that you read the programmer documents (when available) instead. The programmer docs provide the
          most up-to-date information and the latest examples.

nemo

/opt/astro/bin/startnemo

Screenshots

nexcontrol

NexStar Telescope control
Version : 0.2

Author(s) : [email protected]

License : GPL

Website : http://www.mybrainhurts.com/projects/nexcontrol/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 9.39 Kb

Summary

This release is a little more user-friendly and reports Alt-Az and RA/DEC in the correct
formats. It does not yet support input of those, that will come soon.

Usage: next_control.pl [command]

Commands: Kx Echo
B12AB,4000 Goto Azm-Alt
R34AB,12CE Goto Ra-Dec (must be aligned)
Z Get Azm-ALt
E Get Ra-Dec (must be aligned)
M Cancel Goto
L Goto Complete? (1=yes,0=no)
J Alignment Complete? (1=yes,0=no)

Note: This version supports firmware 1.6 commands only. Further support is
anticipated as soon as I get my hands on the hardware. If you wish to
donate hardware to make my development go faster, let me know.

This software is released under the GPL. See the file LICENSE.
If you find this software useful, or would like features added, please
send me an e-mail and let me know.

nightfall

/opt/astro/bin/startnightfall

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

   animated views of eclipsing binary stars, 
   lightcurves and radial velocity curves, 
   best-fit binary star parameters for a given set of observational data. 

It is, however, not able to fry your breakfast egg on your harddisk.

Eclipsing binary stars are most often very close systems. In such systems, owing to tidal forces, the shapes of both stars can be highly nonspherical, up to the possible formation of an
'overcontact' system, where both stars form a single, dumbell-shaped object.

NIGHTFALL is a mildly ultramundane program of baroque complexity (I like Verdi and Händel on lazy sunday mornings - friday evenings are better with Iron Maiden and a good whisky).
NIGHTFALL is based on a physical model that takes into account the nonspherical shape of stars in close binary systems, as well as mutual irradiance of both stars, and a number of additional
physical effects.

NIGHTFALL can handle a large range of configurations, including overcontact systems, eccentric (non-circular) orbits, surface spots and asynchroneous rotations (stars rotating slower or faster
than the orbital period), and the possible presence of a third star in the system.

NIGHTFALL supports the GNOME desktop (if installed), but does not require it.
Also, NIGHTFALL supports internationalization. Currently, besides the default language (english), only german is supported. The language is selected by the environment variable LANG (must
be set before starting the program, in sh, bash: LANG=de; export LANG
in csh, tcsh: setenv LANG de). If used in non-interactive mode, unless a configuration file is read in at startup (see info on configuration files), NIGHTFALL requires at least the following six numerical arguments on the
command line (in that order):

   (1) the mass ratio of both stars (mass(Secondary)/mass(Primary), allowed range 0.0001 - 10000.0. For Roche lobe fill factors (see below) above one, the mass ratio is restricted to
   0.003 - 50. 
   (2) orbital inclination ( = viewing angle of orbital plane, range 0 - 90 degree), where 0 deg corresponds to face-on view (no eclipse possible), and 90 deg to edge-on view (eclipse
   guaranteed). For angles in between, the occurence of an eclipse depends on the mass ratio and the Roche fill factors (see below). 
   (3,4) Roche lobe fill factors. The Roche lobe is the maximum volume a star can fill in a binary system. Its size is, in general, different for the two stars, and depends on the mass ratio
   (see details on 'Roche lobe' for an explanation). The Roche lobe fill factor is in units of the polar radius of the Roche lobe. The allowed range is 0.001 - 1.3. For values above 1.0, both
   stars merge into a common envelope/overcontact system. 
   (5,6) surface temperatures of both stars (in Kelvin, range 350 - 350000; Kelvin = degree Celsius + 273.15). Just for comparison, the surface temperature of the sun is 5780 K. If you
   use the 'model atmosphere' option, the allowed range shrinks to 3000 - 35000K. 

These six numerical arguments are always required, if NIGHTFALL is used in command-line (i.e. non-interactive) mode without reading in a configuration file (see below)

$ nightfall -U -C ty_boo.cfg

will read parameters from a configuration file and start NIGHTFALL in interactive mode. The configuration file is a simple text file that can be edited by hand. In interactive mode, you can also
write out the current parameters to a configuration file.

$ nightfall (without arguments) will produce a full list of options (many).

By default, NIGHTFALL will do nothing more than run in non-interactive mode, compute the lightcurve, write it to an output file 'NightfallCurve.dat', and exit silently. If you want more
(nifty plots, etc.), read on.

nightview

/opt/astro/bin/startnightview

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

The NightView package is a utility to control astronomical CCD
cameras and telescope mounts. It contains support for the SBIG
instruments supported by the S. Ashe library.

nmisc

Package of NOAO miscellaneous tasks
Version : 2003.05

Author(s) : Various

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 1.93 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

This external package contains NOAO developed tasks which by themselves are
too minor to form their own external package. These tasks are made available
in this package prior to distribution as part of the standard IRAF core
system or NOAO package. Thus the contents of this package will vary
with time. The current contents of the package are:

-- Beta version tasks for creating and using pixel masks --
ccdmask - Create a pixel mask from a CCD image
fixpix - Fix pixels defined by a pixel mask
text2mask - Convert text description to pixel mask

-- Focusing and PSF measuring tasks --
kpnofocus - Determine the best focus from KPNO focus images
psfmeasure - Measure PSF sizes from stellar images
specfocus - Determine spectral focus and alignment variations
starfocus - Determine direct focus variations from stellar images

-- New version with additional FWHM measurements from the V2.11 TV package --
newimexamine - IMEXAMINE with new FWHM measurements

-- New task from the V2.10.4 IMAGES package --
xregister - Register 1-D pr 2-D images using x-correlation techniques

opensourceastro-base

Libraries and basic installation prep for Open Source Astronomy
Version : 10.0

Author(s) : Dave Mills ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://www.openastro.com

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 21.27 Mb

Summary

This package should be installed first and contains the basic
shared libraries and tools to support installation of the rest
of the Open Source Astronomy distribution.

The default location for all non-rpm packages is in the
/opt/astro directory tree. If you do not have sufficient
space on the / partition you can create a link to another
partition. The GUI installer offers to do this the first
time it is used. You must login as root to run the installer
for this step. If you wish to install subsequent packages
using you normal login, make sure that you change the owner/group
permissions on /opt/astro to allow it.

opensourceastro-library

Comprehensive html format documentation for Open Source Astronomy
Version : 10.0

Author(s) : Various

License : GPL

Website : http://www.openastro.com

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 117.67 Mb

Summary

This package contains the full html format documentation for all
packages included in the Open Source Astronomy distribution.
It also contains a set of printable (postscript and pdf)
documents in the /opt/astro/doc directory.

It is recommended that this package is loaded first so that
you can browse the library and decide which packages to install
next. Installing everything will require ~8Gb.

openuniverse

/opt/astro/bin/startopenuniverse

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

   Strictly spoken it's a piece of software, simulating the Solar System's bodies in 3D on your Windows or Linux PC (will work
in most *NIX's as well). In difference to quite a few other programs it does so in realtime. Meaning you can view all the
planets, moons and spaceships move along their paths, trace them, follow them, orbit them and even control them (time and
spaceship contol). And you won't have to fight your way through hordes of green, slimey and one-eyed aliens for that ;-) 


History 


OpenUniverse (OU) was formely known as Solar System Simulator (Ssystem). It was initially released on Nov 1997 with the
intention to create a rotating Earth display on a main stream PC. Since these early roots a continuing development and
expansion has taken place. Was version 1.0 only aware of the major bodies (planets), version 1.2 added a whole bunch of
moons. Solar System v1.6 then added more ways of movement for the user's eye (camera) within Solar System's virtual
universe and last but not least better textures for a lot of bodies. This version, called OpenUniverse (OU) finally has been
renamed to underline the concept behind the further development of the program: Open for the whole Universe, not just the
solar system. Open to use, extend and change. Finally open for all users, programmers and for you. :)

OrbitViewer

History:
This applet was created by Osamu Ajiki (AstroArts Inc.) in 1996. It was further modified by Ron Baalke (NASA/JPL) in 2000-2001.

partiview

partiview is an advanced 4D-visualization tool
Version : 0.7.06

Author(s) : Peter Teuben, Stuart Levy

License : NCSA2

Website : http://bima.astro.umd.edu/nemo/amnh/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 3

Disk space required for installation is 8.48 Mb
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startpartiview

Screenshots

Summary

partiview is an advanced 4D-visualization tool, which also understands Starlab ``worldline'' (tdyn) datasets. Although is has been derived from VirDir, partiview can be compiled and run on
relatively cheap hardware, and therefore facilitate development of new visualization algorithms.

PGC

This "catalog of principal galaxies" constitutes the basis of the
"Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies" (RC3). It lists
equatorial coordinates for the equinoxes 1950 and 2000 and cross
identifications for 73197 galaxies. Of the 73197 galaxies, 40932 have
coordinates with standard deviations of less than ten arcsec. Listed
are 131,601 names from the 38 most common sources. These data are
given when available: morphological descriptions, apparent major and
minor axes, apparent magnitudes, radial velocities, and position
angles.

phat

Pat Hall's Add-on Tasks
Version : 2.11

Author(s) : Pat Hall

License : Free

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 140.18 Kb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

This is my compilation of personal miscellaneous add-on IRAF tasks
and their help files, including some tasks for defringing and coadding
optical CCD data, and tasks specifically designed for data from the
CTIO 4-meter using the Big Throughput Camera (BTC) of Bernstein et al.
This version is supplementary to PHIIRS, and in fact requires it.
Any task listed in the PHAT package menu which is not in this PHAT
package can be found in the PHIIRS package. PHIIRS should always
be loaded before PHAT in IRAF. The entire package available as a
compressed tarfile from "www.astro.utoronto.ca/~hall/phat211.tar.gz".

phiirs

Pat Hall's Infrared Imaging Reduction Software
Version : 2.11.1

Author(s) : Pat Hall

License : Free

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 258.19 Kb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

    Spawned from original tasks by Doug Williams & Anne Turner and
    including many cannibalized parts from DIMSUM (Dickinson et al).

v.0 950714 Spawned from original tasks by Doug Williams & Anne Turner and
including many cannibalized parts from the DIMSUM package (Dickinson
et al.). Read "phiirs.hlp" for an introduction.

v.1 960226 Minor revisions. Read "phiirs.hlp" for an introduction.

v.2 960711 Major revisions and additions; tasks are now available
for complete reduction from raw data to images suitable for
input to FOCAS or such. Read "phiirs.hlp" for an introduction.
The entire package is available as a compressed tarfile
from "http://www.astro.utoronto.ca/~hall/phiirsold.tar.gz".
Replace "iterstat.cl" with "iterstatold.cl" if problems occur.

v.2.10 980314 Final release for IRAF Version 2.10. Read "phiirs.hlp"
for an introduction and overview. NOTE that several perl scripts
(included with the package) are used for image coaddition if the
CTIO package is unavailable. Several awk scripts are also used for
photometric scaling tasks. Entire package available as a compressed
tarfile from "http://www.astro.utoronto.ca/~hall/phiirs.tar.gz".
To install, enter the proper pathnames in "phiirs.cl" and
"phiirs.hd", load the softools IRAF package, and type
"mkhelpdb root.hd helpdb.mip", deleting the old helpdb.mip
if necessary. See "sample.loginuser.cl" for how to include
the package in your default IRAF startup.

    For this & subsequent versions PHIIRS can now handle the DATE-OBS
    keyword in both "old" format "dd/mm/yy" and the new millenium format
    "yyyy-mm-dd" (affects first.cl, irimfirst.cl, and irtffirst.cl only).
    Currently I believe the IRAF astutil.setairmass task only accepts old
    format, but presumably any update to it will be backwards compatible.

v.2.11 980805 IRAF V2.11 + FITS kernel release. Read "phiirs.hlp" for an
introduction and overview. Default image extension is now assumed to
be "fits" instead of "imh". I don't guarantee that all tasks are
100% compatible with V2.11, but all problems I've encountered in 5+
months of use have been fixed. NOTE that several perl scripts
(included with the package) are used for image coaddition if the
CTIO package is unavailable. Several awk scripts are also used for
photometric scaling tasks. Entire package available as a compressed
tarfile from "http://www.astro.utoronto.ca/~hall/phiirs211.tar.gz".
To install, enter the proper pathnames in "phiirs.cl" and
"phiirs.hd", load the softools IRAF package, and type
"mkhelpdb root.hd helpdb.mip", deleting the old helpdb.mip
if necessary. See "sample.loginuser.cl" for how to include
the package in your default IRAF startup.

v.2.11.1 990415/990519 New V2.11 release including "dophiirs.cl" script task.
Read "phiirs.hlp" and "doc/dophiirs.hlp" for an introduction and
overview. Other changes from v.2.11 (besides inevitable bug fixes):
renamed task "irflat2.cl" to "domeflat.cl"; added tasks "cfhtfirst.cl",
"onisfirst.cl", & "piscesfirst.cl" for use with particular telescope/
instrument combinations; better "irshift.cl", "qkflat.cl" & "qksky.cl";
"nshift.cl" task added for finding offsets for N images or image sets
overlapping a central image, and "onis6ew.cl" & "onis3ew.cl" included
as examples of how to build a large mosaic from individual image sets;
and streamlined tasks for faster reduction of large IR arrays (e.g.
iterstat can be run for single parameters only; irshift includes an
imsection parameter to avoid displaying every image; & minv is faster).
NOTE that several perl scripts (included with the package) are
used for image coaddition if the CTIO package is unavailable.
Several awk scripts are also used for photometric scaling tasks.
Entire package available as a compressed tarfile from
"http://www.astro.utoronto.ca/~hall/phiirs211.1.tar.gz".
To install, enter the proper pathname in "phiirs.cl", load the IRAF
softools package, and type "mkhelpdb root.hd helpdb.mip", deleting the
old "helpdb.mip" if necessary. See "sample.loginuser.cl" for how to
include the package in your default IRAF startup.

phoebe

PHOEBE is not a new model nor is meant to be a front-end to any existing model. It is designed to be a facility that can encompass any number of models, inverse problem solvers and scientific, mathematical or technical enhancements. Its structure enables users to combine different existing approaches and add new approaches to the solution-seeking process with minimal technical effort.

photom

This package contains software to match one list of objects against
another list, allowing for arbitrary translation, rotation, scaling,
and some distortion. The code is designed specifically for
astronomical data: list of stars or galaxies. There is a small
"pre-processor" to put astronomical data into the proper format
for matching, and a "post-processor" to apply a transformation
to the astronomical coordinates in a list. Most of the real work
is done by the "match" program itself.

pyraf

PyRAF is a command language for IRAF
Version : 1.1.2

Author(s) : Space Telescope Science Institute ([email protected])

License : pyraf

Website : http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/pyraf/what_is_pyraf

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 56.93 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startpyraf

Screenshots

PyRAF is a command language for IRAF based on the Python scripting language that can be used in place of the existing IRAF CL.
Why a new IRAF CL?

The current IRAF CL has some shortcomings as a scripting language that make it difficult to use in writing scripts, particularly complex scripts. The major problem is that the IRAF CL has no error or exception handling. If an error occurs, the script halts immediately with an error message that has little or no information about where the error occurred. This makes it difficult to debug scripts, impossible to program around errors that can be anticipated, and difficult to provide useful error messages to the user.

But there are other important reasons for wanting to replace the CL. We want to develop a command language that is a stronger environment for general programming and that provides more tools than the existing IRAF CL. Python (www.python.org), like Perl and Tcl, is a free, popular scripting language that is useful for a very wide range of applications (e.g., writing CGI scripts, text processing, file manipulation, graphical programming, etc.). Python is also an open system that can be easily extended by writing new modules in Python, C, or Fortran. By developing a Python interface to IRAF tasks, we open up the IRAF system and make it possible to write scripts that combine IRAF tasks with the numerous other capabilities of Python.

Ultimately, we plan for PyRAF to have command-line data access and manipulation facilities comparable to those of IDL (the Interactive Data Language, www.rsinc.com, which has extensive array-processing and image manipulation capabilities). It should eventually be possible to write applications in PyRAF that can manipulate the data directly in memory and display it much as IDL does. We are hoping that Python and PyRAF will become the programming language of first resort, so that programmers and astronomers will only infrequently need to write programs in C or Fortran. Moreover, when it is necessary to use compiled languages, programs written in C, C++, and Fortran can be easily linked with and integrated into PyRAF.

PySBIG

qastrocam

/opt/astro/bin/startqastrocam

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

radial

/opt/astro/bin/startradial

Summary

This program calculates the radial velocities of
both stars in a binary system, allowing for user
configuration of stellar masses, semimajor axis,
inclination of orbital plane, orbital eccentricity,
time to collect data, and calculation frequency.

For your convenience, default values have been
added to the program, so you can run it with
nothing other than variable eccentricity, if you like.

rvsao

An IRAF package to obtain radial velocities from spectra
Version : 2.1.28

Author(s) : Doug Mink

License : Free

Website : http://tdc-www.harvard.edu/iraf/rvsao/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 1.21 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

The package RVSAO defined in this directory was developed by Doug Mink at
the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics from the redshift package
originally written by Gerard Kriss at Johns Hopkins University and modified
significantly by Steve Levine at the University of Wisconsin. It obtains
radial velocities and velocity dispersions using cross-correlation methods
or emission line fits. It consists of five tasks: XCSAO, EMSAO, BCVCORR,
SUMSPEC, and LINESPEC. If you have any problems, please contact Doug Mink,
[email protected]. This package has not been tested on a VMS system.
A task, RELEARN, has been provided to aid in updating parameters. Run it
instead of UNLEARN to keep your current parameters settings while adding
new parameters.

After the Revision Notes, you will find installation instructions.

A fairly complete description of this package has been published in the
August 1998 issue of the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the
Pacific. For further updates, see http://tdc-www.harvard.edu/iraf/rvsao/

rvx

Radial Velocity analysis package.
Version : 1.0

Author(s) : Various

License : Free

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 504.24 Kb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

This archive contains the Radial Velocity
analysis package. Package PSET support code as well as the source
for the cross-correlation task, FXCOR, are included.

s4l

/opt/astro/bin/starts4l

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

The program is based on the popular two-star conversion algorithm, based on an Feb '89 Sky and Telescope magazine article by Toshimi Taki, to translate between altazimuth and equatorial
coordinates. The scope need only be accurately aligned on two widely separated stars using a high power reticle eyepiece; there is no need to level the base. The scope can also be initially
set on a planet, say, soon after sunset. After a couple of minutes of microstepping recentering, the scope is initialized on the same object again. The scope will continue to track the object,
keeping it in the eyepiece field of view for an hour or two.

In addition, the program will use a third initialization point, for more accuracy than the two star initialization would otherwise give. Any of the three initialization positions can be reinitialized
as often as wanted. All init positions are saved to a file for later analysis.

The conversion algorithm allows the input of mount construction errors. For instance, one altitude bearing may be a bit lower than its counterpart. Normally this would cause a pointing error,
but the conversion algorithm will compensate once given the amount of the error. The program can refine the altitude angle based on the initialized positions. Per the original Taki routine, the
starting azimuth can be any number. Now the starting altitude only needs to be set to within 10 degrees or so. This altitude offset algorithm was contributed by Dave Sopchak. This is the
'Z3' error (offset in elevation between the optical axis and the mechanical axis) so named by Taki. Taki's Z1 (axes non-perpendicularity) and Z2 (offset in horizon between the optical axis
and the mechanical axis) errors are also calculated after at least three initializations are done.

The software is event driven by either keyboard or hand paddle input. If no events occur, then the scope moves to the current equatorial coordinates. If the coordinates remain unchanged, the
scope tracks. If new coordinates are entered, the scope slews. Slews can only be interrupted by pressing or releasing a button on the handpad, and by the keyboard, and by the altitude or
azimuth limits if the interrupt driven halfstepping option is turned on. Tracking should be paused if hot-keying out to another program. When the program is exited, the scope's altazimuth
coordinates are saved along with any initialized positions.

The software handles backlash and handles periodic error correction, or PEC, for both axis. A 'guide' function is also included so that guiding for a minute or two nulls occasional tiny residual
drift. Drift can be manually entered in both equatorial and altazimuth coordinates.

savi

/opt/astro/bin/startsavi

Screenshots

sbigstv

SBIG STV camera control
Version : 0.4

Author(s) : ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://www.prl.res.in/~shashi/instruments/stv_linux.html

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 13.12 Kb

Screenshots

I have written a Linux GTK app to control the SBIG STV autoguider for use with our Optical Polarimeter on PRL's 1.2m Telescope at Gurushikhar.
Present version (screenshot below) is designed to emulate the hardware control panel keys of the STV completely. It includes a real-time display of the STV's 2x24 status display. Downloading / display of images are not yet supported (no requirements as yet since we make use of the real-time video output from the STV box)

Execute the program by calling 'stv' from the command line. It can take one command line option -p /path/to_serial_port_device. But this can be set via settings menu option also once the gui is running.

To test the binary without the hardware connected you can try this:

  stv -p /dev/null 

Before going further, make sure that the STV hardware is set at communication speed of 115K baud rate. This is presently hardcoded in the program but if there is sufficient need (or if someone can contribute code!) options to change the baud rate could be added.

Now if you have the "led fixed" fonts installed properly (this should be the case if you took the rpm file) then you should be able to get a screen quite similar to the screenshot above. Else you'll get the status display in red coloured default font.

The program can be run as non-root user. Just make sure that the serial port device file has read write permission enabled.

scilab

/opt/astro/bin/startscilab

Screenshots

Summary

Developed at INRIA, Scilab has been developed for system control and signal processing applications. It is freely distributed in source code format (see the copyright file).

Scilab is made of three distinct parts: an interpreter, libraries of functions (Scilab procedures) and libraries of Fortran and C routines. These routines (which, strictly speaking, do not belong
to Scilab but are interactively called by the interpreter) are of independent interest and most of them are available through Netlib. A few of them have been slightly modified for better
compatibility with Scilab's interpreter.

A key feature of the Scilab syntax is its ability to handle matrices: basic matrix manipulations such as concatenation, extraction or transpose are immediately performed as well as basic
operations such as addition or multiplication. Scilab also aims at handling more complex objects than numerical matrices. For instance, control people may want to manipulate rational or
polynomial transfer matrices. This is done in Scilab by manipulating lists and typed lists which allows a natural symbolic representation of complicated mathematical objects such as transfer
functions, linear systems or graphs (see Section ??).

Polynomials, polynomials matrices and transfer matrices are also defined and the syntax used for manipulating these matrices is identical to that used for manipulating constant vectors and
matrices.

Scilab provides a variety of powerful primitives for the analysis of non-linear systems. Integration of explicit and implicit dynamic systems can be accomplished numerically. The scicos
toolbox allows the graphic definition and simulation of complex interconnected hybrid systems.

There exist numerical optimization facilities for non linear optimization (including non differentiable optimization), quadratic optimization and linear optimization.

Scilab has an open programming environment where the creation of functions and libraries of functions is completely in the hands of the user (see Chapter ??). Functions are recognized as
data objects in Scilab and, thus, can be manipulated or created as other data objects. For example, functions can be defined inside Scilab and passed as input or output arguments of other
functions.

In addition Scilab supports a character string data type which, in particular, allows the on-line creation of functions. Matrices of character strings are also manipulated with the same syntax
as ordinary matrices.

Finally, Scilab is easily interfaced with Fortran or C subprograms. This allows use of standardized packages and libraries in the interpreted environment of Scilab.

The general philosophy of Scilab is to provide the following sort of computing environment:

   To have data types which are varied and flexible with a syntax which is natural and easy to use. 
   To provide a reasonable set of primitives which serve as a basis for a wide variety of calculations. 
   To have an open programming environment where new primitives are easily added. A useful tool distributed with Scilab is intersci which is a tool for building interface programs to
   add new primitives i.e. to add new modules of Fortran or C code into Scilab.

   To support library development through ``toolboxes'' of functions devoted to specific applications (linear control, signal processing, network analysis, non-linear control, etc.) 

sextractor

/opt/astro/bin/startsextractor

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu
The following printable documents will be installed :
/opt/astro/doc/sexarticle.ps.gz
/opt/astro/doc/sexarticle.ps

Summary

SExtractor (Source-Extractor) is a program that builds a catalogue
of objects from an astronomical image. It is particularly oriented towards
reduction of large scale galaxy-survey data, but it also performs well on
moderately crowded star fields. Its main features are:

Simplicity of usage and configuration. ffl Speed: typically 500
kpixel/s with a Pentium2@450MHz.
Ability to work with very large images (up to 65k pixels on 32bit machines, or 2G pixels on 64bit machines), thanks to buffered image access.
Robust deblending of overlapping extended objects.
Real-time filtering of images to improve detectability.
Neural-Network-based star/galaxy classifier.
Flexible catalogue output of desired parameters only.
Pixel-to-pixel photometry in dual-image mode.
Handling of weight-maps and flag-maps.
Optimum handling of images with variable S/N.
Special mode for photographic scans.
Modularity of the code that enables one to implement new parameters.

shiny

sky2000

The SKYMAP  Star Catalog System  consists of a  Master Catalog stellar
database  and a collection of utility  software designed to create and
maintain the database and to generate derivative mission star catalogs
(run catalogs). It contains an extensive compilation of information on
almost 300000 stars brighter than 8.0 mag.

The original SKYMAP Master Catalog was generated in the early 1970's.
Incremental updates and corrections were made over the following years
but the first complete revision of the source data occurred with
Version 4.0. This revision also produced a unique, consolidated source
of astrometric information which can be used by the astronomical
community. The derived quantities were removed and wideband and
photometric data in the R (red) and I (infrared) systems were added.

Version 4 of the SKY2000 Master Catalog was completed in April 2002;
it marks the global replacement of the variability identifier and
variability data fields. More details can be found in the description
file sky2kv4.pdf.

skycal

SKYCALC AND SKYCALENDER
Version : 5

Author(s) : John Thorstensen

License : Free

Website : http://imagiware.com/astro/skycalc_notes.html

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 661.29 Kb

Summary

Skycalc is an interactive tool which conveniently handles the
time-and-the-sky calculations commonly encountered in optical
astronomy. It has many features useful for planning observations
and at the telescope.

Skycalendar prints a table of sunrise, sunset, moonrise,
moonset, and so on, organized on a nightly (double-dated) basis
for any site.

This version (posted 2001 February) incorporates some minor
upgrades, bug fixes, and enhancements over V4. Most notably,
for skycalc:

• colon-separated times and coordinates are now permitted;
• the program can be set to read the system clock every time
  output is called for;
• certain small pieces of copyright-protected code have been excised
  and replaced with original or public-domain versions;
• one can now save non-menu site paramters in a file.

And for skycalendar:

• more TeX output options are supported (e.g., one month per page
  in landscape mode).

The two subdirectories are as follows:

src - contains the source codes for skycalc and skycalendar.

doc - contains a manual in four forms - plain TeX, dvi, postscript,
and PDF. Sorry, no HTML manual yet.

skymaker

/opt/astro/bin/startskymaker

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Summary

The general SYNTAX is similar to that of SExtractor:

sky [<list_file>] [-c <Configuration_file>] [- ] ...

• A list file is an ASCII file containing a list of objects that can be added to the simulated image. An example is provided in the sample.list file. Note that only stars (code = 100) and galaxies (code = 200) are recognized in this version.
• Keyword parameters given in the command line override those from the
  configuration file.
• If the list-file is given as unique argument, Skymaker searches for a
  default configuration file called ``default.sky''.
• SkyMaker creates 2 files in output: the image itself, and a catalog containing the objects it contains (with name toto.list if IMAGE_NAME was set to toto.fits).
• Currently, the following TYPEs can be used with the IMAGE_TYPE keyword:
  PUPIL_REAL, PUPIL_IMAGINARY, PUPIL_MODULUS, PUPIL_PHASE, PUPIL_MTF,
  PSF_MTF, PSF_FULLRES, PSF_FINALRES, SKY_NONOISE and SKY. The two latter
  keywords should be used for creating actual instrument images.
• A FITS header (any FITS image, or even an ASCII dump) can be provided through
  the IMAGE_HEADER keyword: simply replace "INTERNAL" by the file name. SkyMaker2
  will then make a copy of this header for the simulated image, enabling the
  latter to be easily processed through your usual reduction tools.
• Thanks to Pascal Fouque, parameters describing common optical
  aberrations (including defocus, spheric, astigmatism and coma) have been
  included in the description of the pupil phase-plane. Their normalisation
  follow the ESO convention (equivalent angular diameter of a circle, in the focal
  plane, which encloses 80% of the PSF flux; this is generally slightly more
  than the FWHM). However the user is invited to check this normalisation, and
  report any unexpected result.
• Please look at the denisI.sky, denisJ.sky and denisK.sky configuration examples
  for more information.
• If a SEED_* parameter is set to 0, the corresponding random generator is
  initialized to a ``random'' (function of time) value.
• Beware of large AUREOLE_RADIUS values: during the calculation of the image,
  a temporary border of <AUREOLE_RADIUS> pixels in thickness is added all
  around the image, and can significantly affect the computation time.

skyviewer

OpenGL based program to display HEALPix -based skymaps
Version : 0.1

Author(s) : Nicholas Phillips ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://hires.gsfc.nasa.gov/~ngphillips/skyviewer/doc/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 533.06 Kb

Screenshots

This is an OpenGL based program to display HEALPix -based skymaps,
saved in FITS format files. The loaded skymaps can be
viewed either on a 3D sphere or as a Mollweide projection. In either
case, realtime panning and zooming are supported, along with rotations
for the 3D sphere view, assuming you have a strong enough graphics card.

* Features
* Requirements
* Download
* Compiling
* Usage
* Change Log
* To Do
* Credits

=> Features

Realtime rotation, zooming and panning of map
Choice of 3D sphere or 2D Mollweide projection
Adjustable mapping from pixel value to color table range
View Temperature, Polarization or NumObs field
Save screen shots to image file
Contextual Help
OS agnostic

spacechart

/opt/astro/bin/startspacechart

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

For installation see the INSTALL file.

Included with the program is the file gliese.dat, which is based on the Gliese
Catalogue of Nearby Stars, 3rd version, which includes all known stars within
25 parsecs of the Sun.

spectime

IRAF SPECTRAL EXPOSURE TIME CALCULATOR
Version : 2.0

Author(s) : Frank Valdes ([email protected])

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 1.09 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

The SPECTIME external package provides a spectral exposure time
calculation engine, SPTIME, that is driven by database files describing
the various components of a spectroscopic system. SPTIME can be used
directly or with different user interfaces for specific spectrographs.
These include IRAF scripts and a web interface.

spectrum

/opt/astro/bin/startspectrum

Screenshots

SPECTRUM can be programmed with "command-line switches" to give a number of different outputs. In the default mode, SPECTRUM computes the stellar-disk-integrated normalized-intensity spectrum, but in addition, SPECTRUM will compute the absolute monochromatic flux from the stellar atmosphere or the specific intensity from any point on the stellar surface.

SPECTRUM and a number of auxiliary programs can be run under batch mode, making automated computation of a large number of synthetic spectra possible.

SPECTRUM is distributed with an atomic and molecular line list for the optical spectral region 3000 A to 6800 A, called luke.lst, suitable for computing synthetic spectra with temperatures between about 4500K and 20,000K.

SPECTRUM currently supports most atomic elements important in stellar spectra and their first or second ions. SPECTRUM also supports the following diatomic molecules: CH, NH, OH, MgH, SiH, CaH, SiO, C2, CN, CO and TiO. Other molecules and atoms will be added in the future.

spptools

A package of SPP programming and debugging tools
Version : 2.12

Author(s) : Various

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 899.21 Kb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

SPPTOOLS - A package of SPP programming and debugging tools made up of the
following tasks.

      chcount -- compare the number of non-white chars in a pair of files
          fid -- query ID database for specific files
          iid -- interactive query of ID database
     memcheck -- check SPP code for possible memory errors
         mkid -- make and ID database
    pkgcreate -- create an external package
    pkgrename -- rename an external package
          qid -- query ID database
     sppcalls -- print a list of SPP code calling sequences
       sppfmt -- indent and format a SPP program source file
      spplint -- a SPP program verifier

starbase

/opt/astro/bin/startstarbase

Screenshots

starjava

Starlink Java Infrastructure and Applications Set
Version : 1.1

Author(s) : Starlink Project

License : GPL

Website : http://www.starlink.ac.uk/star/docs/sun251.htx/node2.html

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 4

Disk space required for installation is 811.00 Kb
This package requires Java installation

Summary

The STARJAVA package contains the following applications and classes. Note, SPLAT, TREEVIEW, JNIAST and JNIHDS have been moved to the STARJAVA package, instead of being individual packages.

APPLICATIONS/UTILITIES:

FROG - Display and analysis of time series data.

SOG - Son of GAIA.

SPLAT - Spectral Analysis Tool.

TABLECOPY - Copy tables from one format to another.

TOPCAT - Tool for OPerations on Catalogues and Tables.

TREEVIEW - Hierarchical data viewer.

CLASS LIBRARIES:

ARRAY - N-dimensional array manipulation and I/O.

ASTGUI - AST specific UI components.

AXIS - Third generation Apache SOAP.

COCO - Java UI for Coco.

DOM4J - Third party DOM access library (org.dom4j.*).

FITS - STARJAVA-specific FITS access.

HDS - Non-native HDS utility classes.

HDX - A flexible, extensible, data model for astronomical images, tables and other metadata.

JAIUTIL - Utility classes for JAI.

JETTY - HTTP Server and Servlet Container.

JNIAST - Java Native interface to AST.

JNIHDS - Java Native Interface to HDS.

JSKY - Java Components for Astronomy.

JUNIT - Third party unit testing framework (junit.*).

NDX - N-dimensional astronomical object manipulation and I/O.

PAL - Positional Astronomy Library.

RV - Java UI for RV.

TABLE - Generic table manipulation and I/O.

TAMFITS - Third party basic FITS access (nom.tam.*).

UTIL - Miscellaneous utillity classes.

VOTABLE - VOTable I/O.

The STARJAVA package can be considered to be independent of the standard USSC, and in future will be distributed separately. All the STARJAVA applications and classes are distributed under the GPL licence.

starlab

A package for simulating the evolution of dense stellar systems
Version : 4.3.2

Author(s) : Piet Hut (IAS), Steve McMillan (Drexel U.), Jun Makino (U. Tokyo) Simon Portegies Zwart (U. of Amsterdam)

License : GPL

Website : http://www.sns.ias.edu/~starlab/starlab.html

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 3

Disk space required for installation is 3.07 Mb
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startstarlab

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

All stellar-dynamical $N$-body simulations rely on sophisticated
integration schemes to follow the motion of all particles in the
system under study. It is the job of the $N$-body program to deliver
a faithful representation of the dynamical evolution of the system,
along with information on all stellar interactions of interest, to the
user, subject only to the fundamental limitations imposed by the
chaotic equations of motion and the laws of physics. It is becoming
increasingly clear that, in order to make detailed comparisons between
simulations and the high-quality data now available, $N$-body (and
perhaps also detailed Monte-Carlo) simulations are really the only
viable option.

Performing $N$-body simulations is already is a complex and demanding
task. However, generating data is only half the job. The other half
of the work of a computational theorist parallels that of the
observer, and lies in the job of data reduction. As in the
observational case, a good set of tools is essential, and unless the
tools can be used in a flexible and coherent software environment,
their usefulness will be severely limited. Three requirements are
central in handling the data flow from a full-scale globular cluster
simulation: modularity, flexibility, and compatibility. Starlab
incorporates these three requirements.

To some extent, Starlab is modeled on NEMO, a stellar dynamics
software environment developed six years ago at the Institute for
Advanced Study, in large part by Josh Barnes, with input from Peter
Teuben and Piet Hut (and subsequently maintained and extended by Peter
Teuben). Starlab differs from NEMO mainly in the following areas: it
emphasizes the use of UNIX pipes, rather than temporary files; its use
of tree structures rather than arrays to represent $N$-body systems;
and its guarantee of data conservation---data which are not understood
by a given module are simply passed on rather than filtered out.

How to perform specific common tasks using Starlab tools.

Note: Most tools are just simple interfaces onto the corresponding
library functions, so the tasks listed below could in principle
also be carried out by compiled programs rather than by
pipes. However, the use of pipes is in many ways clearer and
much more flexible.

   For more information on Starlab tools, see the file TOOLS in
   this directory.  For details on a specific tool, type

       tool-name --help

• Create a linked list of 100 equal-mass nodes of unit total mass

  mknode -n 100 -m 1

• Create a system of 100 nodes with a Salpeter mass spectrum with masses
  in the range 0.5 to 10

  mknode -n 100 | mkmass -f 1 -x -2.35 -l 0.5 -u 10

• Create a system of 100 nodes with a mass spectrum and evolve the
  stars without dynamics

  mknode -n 100 | mkmass -f 1 -x -2.35 -l 0.5 -u 10 | ???Simon???

• Create a 500-particle Plummer model, with numbered stars, scaled to
  standard dynamical units

  mkplummer -n 500 -i

• Create a 500-particle W0 = 5 King model, with numbered stars,
  unscaled

  mkking -n 500 -w 5 -i -u

• Create a 500-particle W0 = 5 King model with a Miller-Scalo mass
  spectrum between 0.1 and 20 solar masses, then rescale to unit total
  mass, total energy -0.25, and virial ratio 0.5 and display the
  results graphically

  mkking -n 500 -w 5 -i -u
  | mkmass -f 2 -l 0.1 -u 20
  | scale -m 1 -e -0.25 -q 0.5
  | xstarplot -l 5 -P .5

• Create a 500-particle W0 = 5 King model with a Miller-Scalo mass
  spectrum between 0.1 and 20 solar masses, add in a 10 percent 1-10 kT
  binary population, then rescale to unit total mass, total energy
  (top-level nodes) -0.25, and virial ratio (top-level nodes) 0.5, and
  finally verify the results by analyzing the final snapshot

  mkking -n 500 -w 5 -i -u
  | mkmass -f 2 -l 0.1 -u 20
  | mksecondary -f 0.1 -l 0.25
  | mkbinary -l 1 -u 10
  | scale -m 1 -e -0.25 -q 0.5
  | sys_stats -n -s

• Evolve this model without stellar evolution for 100 dynamical times,
  with log output ever dynamical time and snapshot output every 10
  dynamical times, with a self-consistent tidal field, removing
  escapers when they are more than two Jacobi radii from the cluster
  center

  mkking -n 500 -w 5 -i -u
  | mkmass -f 2 -l 0.1 -u 20
  | mksecondary -f 0.1 -l 0.25
  | mkbinary -l 1 -u 10
  | scale -m 1 -e -0.25 -q 0.5
  | dstar_kira -t 100 -d 1 -D 10 -Q -G 2

• Create a King model with a power-law mass spectrum and a binary
  population, then evolve it with stellar and binary evolution

  mkking -n 500 -w 5 -i -u
  | mkmass -f 1 -x -2.0 -l 0.1 -u 20
  | mksecondary -f 0.1 -l 0.1
  | addstar -Q 0.5 -R 5
  | scale -M 1 -E -0.25 -Q 0.5
  | mkbinary -f 1 -l 1 -u 1000 -o 2
  | dstar_kira -t 100 -d 1 -D 10 -f 0.3 -n 10 -q 0.5 -Q -G 2 -S -B

• Perform a series of 100 3-body scattering experiments involving an
  equal-mass circular binary and a double-mass incomer, with impact
  parameter equal to the binary semimajor axis, relative velocity at
  infinity half that needed for zero total energy, and all other
  parameters chosen randomly, and display the results as a movie

  scatter3 -m 0.5 -e 0 -M 1 -r 1 -v 0.5 -n 100 -C 5 -D 0.1
  | xstarplot -l 4

• Compute cross-sections for interactions between a circular binary
  with component masses 0.75 and 0.25 and an incoming star of mass 1
  and velocity at infinity 0.1, all stars having radius 0.05 binary
  semimajor axes

  sigma3 -d 100 -m 0.25 -e 0 -M 1 -v 0.1 -x 0.05 -y 0.05 -z 0.05

• Create a scattering configuration involving a head-on collision
  between a circular binary and a stable hierarchical triple, and
  verify the result

  mkscat -M 1.5 -r 0 -v 1 -t -a 1 -e 0 -p -a 1 -e 0 -p1 -a 0.1 -e 0
  | flatten | make_tree -D 1 | pretty_print_tree

• Create a scattering configuration involving a head-on collision
  between a circular binary and a stable hierarchical triple, and
  integrate it forward in time

  scatter -i "-M 1.5 -r 0 -v 1 -t -a 1 -e 0 -p -a 1 -e 0 -p1 -a 0.1 -e 0"
  -t 100 -d 1 -v

(etc.)

starplot

/opt/astro/bin/startstarplot

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

StarPlot comes with only two small example data files. This (a) makes it
easier to download, and (b) reduces the need to worry about copyright issues
within the program source tree. Other data files can be downloaded and
installed from the StarPlot web page. Please read the copyright information
in the COPYING and README files of those data sets - note that they can be
freely distributed only if not modified.

stecf

Summary

We have collected together many of the astronomical applications developed as Iraf tasks at the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF) into an Iraf layered
package called "stecf". This package contains several subpackages. One contains a variety of image restoration algorithms including multiple channel and photometric variants of the
Richardson Lucy method. In addition a wholly new package ("impol") for the reduction of polarimetric imaging from HST (and ground-based instruments) is made available for the first
time. Software for the post-pipeline processing of HST NICMOS data, with particular emphasis on the association and pre-processing of images to be used for grism spectral
extraction, and finally a general purpose grism spectral extraction tool are also included.

stellarium

/opt/astro/bin/startstellarium

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

stsdas

IRAF Tools for Hubble Space Telescope data reduction
Version : 2.3

Author(s) : STSCI team

License : STSCI

Website : http://stsdas.stsci.edu/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 246.52 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Screenshots

Summary

The Space Telescope Science Data Analysis System (STSDAS) is software for calibrating and analyzing data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). STSDAS includes the same
calibration routines as are used in the routine data processing pipeline, as well as general-purpose tools and enhancements to the Image Analysis and Reduction Facility (IRAF).

IRAF provides the user interface (command language, or CL) and general purpose graphic and image display facilities. Because STSDAS is layered on IRAF, the system runs on any
computing platform for which an IRAF port is available, including most Unix and VMS systems.

The CL provides a wide range of functions typically provided by an operating system, and uses a syntax similar to Unix. Some of the CL features include input/output redirection and piping,
command buffers and history editing, minimum matching of commands, host-independent file naming, parameter range checking, background and batch processing modes, an integrated online
help system, and a script authoring environment.

stuff

/opt/astro/bin/startstuff

Summary

SkyStuff is a program that generates artificial but realistic
catalog of astronomical sources. These catalogs can be loaded
by SkyMaker to generate image simulations.

sunwait

/opt/astro/bin/startsunwait

Summary

usage: sunwait [options] [sun|civ|naut|astr] [up|down] [+/-offset] [latitude] [longitude]

latitude/longigude are expressed in floating-point degrees, with [NESW] appended
example: sunwait sun up -0:15:10 38.794433N 77.069450W
This example will wait until 15 minutes and 10 seconds before the sun rises in Alexandria, VA
options: -p prints a summary of relevant times
-z changes the printout to Universal Coordinated Time (UTC)
-V prints the version number
-v increases verbosity
-h prints this help

swarp

SWarp is a program that resamples and co-adds together FITS images using any arbitrary astrometric projection defined in the WCS standard.
Version : 2.15

Author(s) : Emmanuel Bertin ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://terapix.iap.fr/soft/swarp/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 3

Disk space required for installation is 301.00 Kb
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startswarp

The following printable documents will be installed :
/opt/astro/doc/swarp.ps

Summary

Resample and combine FITS images in an arbitrary World Coordinate
System.

tables

IRAF Tools for processing FITS table data
Version : 2.3

Author(s) : STSCI team

License : STSCI

Website : http://stsdas.stsci.edu/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 38.16 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Screenshots

talon

tinytim

/opt/astro/bin/starttinytim

The following printable documents will be installed :
/opt/astro/doc/tinytim.ps
/opt/astro/doc/tinytim.pdf

Summary

Tiny Tim is a program which generates simulated Hubble Space
Telescope point spread functions (PSFs). It is written in C and distributed
as source code and runs on a wide variety of UNIX
and VMS systems. Tiny Tim was written by John Krist. Early NICMOS support
was provided by Richard Hook (ST-ECF/ESO).

Tiny Tim includes mirror zonal errors, time dependent aberrations (for
the pre-repair instruments), field dependent obscuration patterns (for
WF/PC-1 and WFPC2), and filter passband
effects. It can produce a normally sampled or subsampled PSF. Output is
a FITS image file.

vol

IRAF Tools for manipulating and viewing 3d or in some cases 4d volume images
Version : 2.8

Author(s) : Frank Valdes ([email protected])

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 1.53 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Screenshots

IMJOIN joins sets of N-dimensional images together along a specified axis.
IM3DTRAN performs 3d image transposes; if appropriate [,-,*] type image
sections are given as input, it also accomplishes rotates. Tasks such as
these may later be integrated into a standard IRAF package.

PVOL projects through volume images, casting rays onto a set of output
2d images distributed along a great circle around the volume image. When
the output images are displayed or recorded onto video and played back,
the volume image appears to rotate. Various translucency and opacity
algorithms are employed.

I2SUN is a temporary task for converting IRAF images into Sun rasterfiles,
primarily to take advantage of a Sun-specific MOVIE utility for viewing
digital movies on a workstation screen; it will no longer be necessary when
the IRAF image display servers can display movies.

vtk

The Visualization Toolkit
Version : 3.1.2

Author(s) : Ken Martin, Will Schroeder, Bill Lorensen

License : vtk

Website : http://www.kitware.com

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 3

Disk space required for installation is 47.91 Mb

Summary

The Visualization Toolkit, an Object-Oriented Approach to 3D Graphics is
the title of a new book published by Prentice Hall (ISBN 013199837-4).

This is version 3.1. In this release there have been many bugs fixed and a
number of new classes. Depending on when you get this, there may be more
recent versions out.

wcstools

/opt/astro/bin/startwcstools

Screenshots

The 1998 ADASS paper is the best published description of the other tools
in the WCSTools package, including SAOimage when used for WCS work:
"WCSTools: An Image Astrometry Toolkit",
Douglas J. Mink (1998), in Astronomical Data Analysis Software and
Systems VIII, A.S.P. Conference Series, Vol. 172, 1999, Dave Mehringer,
Ray Plante, Doug Roberts, eds., pp. 498-501.

Program Descriptions

addpix Add a constant value(s) to specified pixel(s)

conpix Operate on all of the pixels of an image

cphead Copy keyword values between FITS or IRAF images

delhead Delete specified keywords from FITS or IRAF image file headers

delwcs Delete the WCS keywords from an image. If both EPOCH and EQUINOX
are present, EQUINOX is also deleted.

edhead Edit the header of a FITS file or the user parameters of an IRAF
image file using a the text editor specified by the EDITOR environment
variable.

getcol Extract specified fields from an space-separated ASCII table file

getdate Convert dates and times between various formats

gethead Return values for keyword(s) specified after filename.

getpix Return value(s) of specified pixel(s)

gettab Extract values from tab table data base files

i2f Read two-dimensional IRAF image file and write FITS image file

imcat List catalog sources which should be found in the area of the sky
covered by a specific image. Special catalogs supported include
the HST Guide Star Catalog, the USNO-A2.0 Catalog, the Tycho-2 Catalog,
the SAO Catalog, and the PPM Catalog.

imextract Extract 1- or 2-dimensional images from 2- or 3-dimensional images

imhead Print FITS or IRAF header

immatch Match catalog and image stars using the WCS in the image file.

imrot Rotate and/or reflect FITS or IRAF image files

imsize Print center and size of image using WCS keywords in header
imcat List catalog sources which should be found in the area of the sky
covered by a specific image. Special catalogs supported include
the HST Guide Star Catalog, the USNO-A2.0 Catalog, the Tycho-2 Catalog,
the SAO Catalog, and the PPM Catalog.

imextract Extract 1- or 2-dimensional images from 2- or 3-dimensional images

imhead Print FITS or IRAF header

immatch Match catalog and image stars using the WCS in the image file.

imrot Rotate and/or reflect FITS or IRAF image files

imsize Print center and size of image using WCS keywords in header

imstack Stack 1-dimensional images into a 2-dimensional image

imstar Find and list the n brightest stars in an IRAF or FITS image, with
their sky coordinates if there is WCS information in the image header.

imwcs Automaticaly find stars in a FITS or IRAF image, match them to HST
Guide or UJC Stars, compute the relation between sky coordinates and
image coordinates, and write in in the image header.

keyhead Change keyword names in headers of FITS or IRAF images.

newhead Create dataless FITS image header files with BITPIX=0

remap Remap an image from one WCS into another, rebinning as necessary

sethead Set header keyword values in FITS or IRAF images.

setpix Set specified pixel(s) to specified value(s)

scat Search a source catalog given a region on the sky. Special catalogs
supported include the HST Guide Star Catalog, the USNO A and ACT
Catalogs, the SAO Catalog, and the PPM Catalog.

sky2xy Print image pixel coordinates for given sky coordinates on the
command line or in a list file.

skycoor Convert between J2000, B1950, and Galactic coordinates from the
command line or a file.

sumpix Total pixel values over an image row or column or a specified area

wcshead Print basic world coordinate system information on one line per image

xy2sky Print sky coordinates for given image pixel coordinates on the command
line or in a list file.

weightwatcher

/opt/astro/bin/startweightwatcher

The following printable documents will be installed :
/opt/astro/doc/ww.ps

Summary

WeightWatcher is a program that combines weight-maps, flag-maps and
polygon data in order to produce control maps which can directly be
used in astronomical image-processing packages like Swarp or
SExtractor.

SYNTAX: ww [-c <configuration_file>] [- ]

x11iraf

IRAF GUIs
Version : 1.3

Author(s) : Doug Tody, Mike Fitzpatrick ([email protected])

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 36.99 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Screenshots

XImtool is an image display server. This provides an image display
capability to remote client applications using the standard imtool/iis image
display protocol. The image display server allows a number of image frame
buffers to be created and displayed. The client can read and write data in
these frame buffers. Any frame or combination of frames can be displayed.
Various display options are provided, e.g., zoom and pan, flip about either
axis, frame blink, windowing of the display, and colortable enhancement.

XTapemon is a conventional Xt/Athena application which allows the status of
an IRAF tape job to be monitored continuously while the tape is being
accessed.

XAudine

/opt/astro/bin/startXAudine

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

xccdred

XCCDRED -- Experimental version of CCDRED Package
Version : 1.0

Author(s) : Frank Valdes ([email protected])

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 3.56 Mb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Screenshots

XDF

Includes the following

jXDF-017-stable-rc1

XDF_017.dtd

jFITSML-alpha1_0

txt2XML-1.61-BETA

xdimsum

Experimental Deep Infrared Mosaicing Software
Version : 2.12

Author(s) : Various

License : AURA

Website : http://iraf.noao.edu

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 637.36 Kb
This package requires prior installation of iraf

Summary

XDIMSUM is a package for creating accurate sky subtracted images from sets of
dithered observations. While the observations need not be in the infrared, the
dominance of the variable sky background in infrared data requires dithering of
many short exposures and recombination with careful sky subtraction to produce
deep images. Hence the package is called "Experimental Deep Infrared Mosaicing
Software" or XDIMSUM.

XDIMSUM is a variant of the DIMSUM package developed by P. Eisenhardt, M.
Dickensen, S.A. Stanford, and J. Ward. F. Valdes (IRAF group) modified DIMSUM
to support FITS format images, added the DIMSUM tutorial demos script, wrote
the original version of this document, and repackaged DIMSUM for distribution
as an IRAF external package. L. Davis (IRAF group) rewrote the the major
DIMSUM scripts to improve their clarity, robustness, and efficiency, added
new scripts for computing relative offsets, and documented the tasks. The new
package uses the same default algorithms as DIMSUM but is sufficiently
different in format that it has been renamed XDIMSUM. A short summary of the
major differences between XDIMSUM and DIMSUM is provided below and is
duplicated in the on-line user's guide. XDIMSUM is being made available to the
community as an external pacakge in the hope that some of the new features may
prove useful to others. Users should direct XDIMSUM installation questions,
bug reports, questions about technical details, and comments and suggestions
to the the IRAF group ([email protected]) not the original authors.

xephem

/opt/astro/bin/startxephem

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

XGrav

Interactive Gravity Modeling software
Version : 1.0

Author(s) : Steve Roecker ([email protected])

License : Free

Website : http://gretchen.geo.rpi.edu/roecker/manuals/Xgrav/Xgrav.html

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 34.25 Kb

Summary

Xgrav is a program used to interactively model gravity anomalies with 2.5 dimensional subsurface bodies. Xgrav is written in C and uses X windows.

Xgrav was developed on a SUN SPARCstation LX running Solaris 2.3, and compatibility with other environments should not be assumed. It is a fairly straightforward program, however, so modifications should not be extensive. Xgrav also requires a color monitor to work properly.

xite

/opt/astro/bin/startxite

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

The command line programs and subroutine library are written in C and
run under UNIX, Windows NT and Windows 95.

The display programs run under UNIX. They work with images of
arbitrary size and pixel type on 8-bit PseudoColor and 24-bit
DirectColor and TrueColor X11 displays. Images can be zoomed and
panned, and colortables can be selected from a menu. The main display
program, xshow, gives access to most of the other command line
programs via a menu interface which the user can customize and extend
to include local programs. Input images for the menu entries can be
selected with the mouse, and output images appear on the display.

The available programs include operations such as statistics, merging,
resampling, arithmetic/logical/relational operations, rotation,
mirroring, affine transformations, convolution, filter design,
Fourier/Hartley/Haar/Hough transforms, color manipulation, histogram
transformations, global and local thresholding, binary thinning, edge
detection, morphological operations, classification, image analysis
and texture estimation.

A toolkit is supplied to simplify development of X11 based
applications.

xmccd

/opt/astro/bin/startxmccd

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

XmCCD is intended to be used in conjunction with ds9 for image display,
and XmTel for telescope control.

xpa

The XPA messaging system provides seamless communication between many kinds of Unix programs
Version : 2.1.5

Author(s) : Doug Mink

License : GPL

Website : http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD/xpa/index.html

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 2

Disk space required for installation is 290.32 Kb

Summary

The XPA messaging system provides seamless communication between many kinds of Unix programs, including X programs and Tcl/Tk programs. It also provides an easy way for users to communicate with these XPA-enabled programs by executing XPA client commands in the shell or by utilizing such commands in scripts. Because XPA works both at the programming level and the shell level, it is a powerful tool for unifying any analysis environment: users and programmers have great flexibility in choosing the best level or levels at which to access XPA services, and client access can be extended or modified easily at any time.

A program becomes an XPA-enabled server by defining named points of public access through which data and commands can be exchanged with other client programs (and users). Using standard TCP sockets as a transport mechanism, XPA supports both single-point and broadcast messaging to and from these servers. It supports direct communication between XPA clients and servers, or indirect communication via an intermediate message bus emulation program. Host-based access control is implemented, as is as the ability to communicate with XPA servers across a network.

Because XPA consists of a library and a set of user programs, it is most appropriately built from source. XPA has been ported to Solaris, Linux, Mac OSX (darwin) and Windows 98/NT/2000/XP. Once the source code tar file is retrieved, XPA can be built and installed easily using standard commands:

xray

Summary

PROS/XRAY is a multi-mission x-ray analysis software system designed to run under the Image Reduction and Analysis Facility (IRAF).

The analysis of x-ray data differs from that of other wavelengths due to the nature of x-ray data. The scarcity of data, the low signal-to-noise ratio and the large gaps in exposure time make
data screening and masking an important part of the analysis process.

The PROS software includes spatial, spectral, timing, data I/O and conversion routines, plotting applications, and general algorithms for performing arithmetic operations with imaging data.

A more complete description of PROS can be found in the PROS User's GUIDE (PUG).

How PROS is organized

Programs in PROS are called tasks. Tasks are grouped by function into packages. The major packages in PROS include:

   xdataio - Tasks to convert data to/from FITS format 
   xplot - Plotting routines for XRAY data 
   ximages - Additions to IRAF images package 
   xspatial - X-ray spatial analysis package 
   xspectral - X-ray spectral analysis package 
   xtiming - X-ray timing analysis package 

A diagram of the current package organization is available.

Brief Overview of PROS analysis tasks

   tv display 
          Tasks display and xdisplay will produce a TV display of the data. 

   sky grids 
          The imcontour task calculates and graphs the iso-intensity areas of the images and displays them on a skygrid. 

   coordinates 
          Support for the World Coordinate System (WCS) is provided in all the IRAF and PROS tasks. PROS provides additional interfaces to facilitate conversions, including
          an interactive mode from the image display. 

   graphics 
          All non-image output data files from PROS analysis are produced in TABLE format which can be graphed either with the TABLES sgraph task or with the Interactive
          Graphics Interpreter (igi). 

   source detection 
          The detect package is designed to perform Maximum Likelihood Source detection on data exhibiting Poisson statistics. It uses a signal-to-noise threshold calculation. 

   PRF modeling 
          The imcalc, immodel and imsmooth tasks provide the ability to generate complex Point Response Function model images that can be convolved with observations. 

   data extraction 
          The imcnts task is a utilitarian tool used to extract background subtracted counts from complex regions. 

   timing corrections 
          The timcor package provides the conversions from spacecraft clock to UTC and calculation of the barycenter timing correction. 

   periodic analysis 
          The tasks ltcurv and fft provide general capabilities to examine periodic data. The period and fold tasks include a provision for a decaying period. The qpphase task
          generates a QPOE files with an additional event attribute, phase, that then allows the data to be split according to phase. 

   spectrum extraction 
          The qpspec task allows users to extract a background corrected spectrum from a QPOE file for use in PROS or for export to other analysis systems. 

   model specification and fitting 
          PROS has a flexible spectral model specification language which allows multi-component model fitting. Also, the fit task allows fitting of multiple data sets. 

   flux conversion 
          Fluxes for any object can be calculated from the xflux task. 

xsil

XSIL means eXtensible Scientific Interchange Language.
Version : 1.0

Author(s) : Roy Williams, Caltech, [email protected]

License : GPL

Website : http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/XSIL/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 3

Disk space required for installation is 9.09 Mb
The following printable documents will be installed :
/opt/astro/doc/xsil_spec.pdf

Summary

XSIL means eXtensible Scientific Interchange Language.

How to run the code:

(1) First unpack the distribution, then set the environment.
-- Make sure the JAVA_HOME is correct in the and setup.bat (Windows)
or setup.source (Unix) script. This is NOT the location of the executable
"java", but the place where the /bin and /lib directories.
The "java" executable should be in $JAVA_HOME/bin/java.

-- Make sure the WEB_BROWSER location is correct in the
setup.bat (Windows) or setup.source (Unix) script.

(2) For Unix users,
% source setup.source
% Xlook.sh samples/all.xml

(3) For Windows users, tart a command window, then run the setup,
then the batch file Xlook.bat:
c: setup
c: xlook samples\all.xml

xspace

/opt/astro/bin/startxspace

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

xstar

N-body simulator
Version : 2.2

Author(s) : Wayne Schlitt, ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://www.midwestcs.com/xstar/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 3

Disk space required for installation is 1.09 Mb
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startxstar

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

XStar can be used to animate the root window, as a screen saver or just
to display stuff in a regular window.

The XStar N-body Solver

                   XStar is a Unix program that simulates the movement of stars. It starts by putting a bunch of stars on the screen, and then it lets the inter-body gravitational
                   forces move the stars around. The result is a lot of neat wandering paths, as the stars interact and collide. 

                   Figuring out what paths these stars should take is called the "N-Body Problem", and when there are more than 3 stars involved (N>3), this can be a very hard
                   problem to solve. XStar is just a "toy" N-body solver, but it generates a lot of pretty pictures and gives you an idea of how stars interact. "Real" N-body solvers
                   have to work with many thousands, or even millions of stars, while XStar works with dozens. 

                   Along with the program, there is a fairly large document that explains the N-Body problem in a fair amount of detail. It doesn't get into the gory details of the
                   "real" N-body solvers, but it does give you an overview of the techniques they use. 

All comments, bug reports, bug fixes, enhancements, etc are welcome.
Send them to me at [email protected].

This program is really a heavily modified version of XGrav, which was
written by David Flater ([email protected]) and posted to
alt.sources on 1/21/95. I liked the program enough that I was really
interested in it, but I didn't like it enough to leave it alone. The
idea was Dave's, but I don't think too much of his code has been left
unchanged. There is probably more untouched code from XSwarm, which
Dave used to implement the X port of his n-body problem solving code.

xvarstar

XVarStar is a program written for variable star observers
Version : 0.8

Author(s) : Ivan Vitjuk ([email protected])

License : GPL

Website : http://virtus.freeshell.org/xvarstar

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 3

Disk space required for installation is 9.49 Mb
After the package is installed it can be accessed using the command

/opt/astro/bin/startxvarstar

A shortcut will be installed in the KDE/GNOME desktop menu system,

as an entry in the Astronomy submenu

Screenshots

      - star name
      - magnitude
      - type
      - constellation
      - amplitude

    This searching criteria can be combined so one can search for

example all variable stars located in Andromeda constellation and with
magnitude brighter than 5.00.

    For installation instrictions see INSTALL file.

    2. Catalogue

    Catalogue used in this program is "Combined General Catalogue

of Variable Stars". Info about this catalogue can be found in
README.gcvs file. It has been downloaded from:

http://adc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/adc/cat.pl?/catalogs/2/2214A/

    3. Usage

    Usage of this program is really simple. There is four sections

in main window. On the top there is frame with five buttons. Each one
enables searching by one criteria.

    Bellow this frame there is frame with input fields for each

search criteria. There, user can type search string or number that
will be used for searching. For each input field corresponding button
in above frame must be enabled if one wants searching by this field.

    Next, there is a frame with control buttons. When program is

started, and before first search button "Load" should be pressed to
load GCVS catalogue in memory. If any change occurs in catalogue there
is no need to restart program, just press this button again to reload
catalogue. Button "Search" starts searching by using selected fields,
and button "Save" saves result in file. Button "Clear" clears text
area bellow.

   Last frame contains text area where search result and error

messages are put.

YM

Yale Observatory iMAge Manipulation Application
Version : 1.4

Author(s) : David Goldberg ([email protected])

License : Free

Website : http://www.astro.yale.edu/yomama/

Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 1

Disk space required for installation is 87.64 Kb
This package requires Java installation

Summary

Welcome to the wonderful world of the Yale Observatory iMAge
Manipulation Application, the only tool of its kind which does not
require any sort of advanced scripting knowledge for its use!

Currently, it reads 2 dimensional standard fits files, allows for
flat-fielding, dark subtraction, linear and logarithmic scaling of
images, arbitrary RGB color scales, combining color images (though,
due to security restrictions on Java, the combined images can only be
saved in application, not applet form), saving images in progress to a
buffer, aperture photometry, centroiding and calculation of radial
profiles.