[fitsbits] DS9 public release 2.2

[eric at head-cfa.harvard.edu]

*******************************************************************************

		    DS9: astronomical image display
		 	 Public Release 2.2

		            31 October 2002

	                  SAO/HEAD R&D Group
		     http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD


Summary
-------

We are pleased to announce the availability of DS9 public release 2.2.
More information about DS9 (including download links) is available at
our Web site:

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

DS9 Description
---------------

DS9 is our current offering in the popular SAOimage/SAOtng display
series.  It supports FITS images and binary tables, multiple frame
buffers, region manipulation, and many scale algorithms and
colormaps. It provides for easy communication with external analysis
tasks, and is highly configurable and extensible.

DS9 also supports advanced features such as mosaic images, true
PostScript printing, image tiling and blinking, colormap manipulation,
scaling, arbitrary zoom, rotation, pan, and a variety of coordinate
systems. It supports FTP and HTTP access.  The GUI for DS9 is
user-configurable. GUI elements such as the coordinate display,
panner, magnifier, horizontal and vertical graphs, button bar, and
colorbar can be configured via menus or the command line.

DS9 is a Tk/Tcl application that utilizes our new SAOTk widget set. It
also incorporates the X Public Access (XPA) mechanism to allow external
processes to access and control its data, GUI functions, and algorithms.
One exciting new feature of DS9 is the ability to display multiple
images in tile mode, where each image is scaled, oriented, and rotated
to match WCS parameters. 

New features in this release include:

* support for web-based Archive Servers, such as MAST, SkyView, NVSS, NED, 
SIMBAD and ADS.

* full support for FITS Multiple WCS. Images may rotated and aligned, and
coordinate grids displayed using any available WCS.

* a built-in Help Facility, no longer requiring the use of an external web
browser and network access.

* support for the Virtual Observatory, which allows users to view and analyze
remotely-located data at their local site.

* improved support for external analysis, which allows users to integrate
their own analysis tasks into DS9.

* FITS Binary Table 3D binning, allowing users to create a 3D FITS Data cube
and view the data as an interactive movie.

* support for FITS Binary Table Smoothing using BoxCar, TopHat, and 
Gaussian algorithms.

* new regions: projection, panda, and compass. The interactive projection
region displays an arbitrary cut of the image data, projected along a line.

Platforms and Availability
--------------------------

DS9 is a stand-alone application that requires no installation or
support files.  Binary executables of DS9 currently exist for Solaris,
Linux, LinuxPPC, SGI, Alpha OSF1, HP-UX, MacOSX (darwin) and
Windows 98/NT/2000/XP (all supporting a consistent set of GUI and
functional capabilities).

ds9 is available for download from our Web site:

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

Alternatively, it can be retrieved directly via anonymous ftp from
sao-ftp.harvard.edu in the pub/rd directory.  Source code is available,
though we recommend using the binary distribution where possible.

Acknowledgments
----------------

Much of this code was developed at SAO by the HEAD Software R&D group,
with the significant help of collaborators and beta test users around
the world. We especially would like to acknowledge help from the
following DS9 collaborators:

	De Clarke         (UCO/Lick)
	Maureen Conroy    (SAO)
	Uwe Lammers       (ESA)
	Steve Murray      (SAO)
	Frank Primini     (SAO)
	John Roll         (SAO)
	Peter Teuben      (University of Maryland)

and code contributions from:

	D.S. Berry        (Starlink)
	L. Brown          (HEASARC)
	Mark Calabretta   (ATNF)
	Mike Fitzpatrick  (NOAO)
	Doug Mink         (SAO)
	Doug Tody         (NOAO)
	Steffen Traeger   (Siemens)
	P.T. Wallace      (Starlink)
	R.F. Warren-Smith (Starlink)
	Peter Wilson      (HEASARC)


Work on ds9 was performed at SAO/HEAD with support from the
Educational Outreach Program of the Chandra X-ray Science Center
(NAS8-39073), the Chandra High Resolution Camera (NAS8-38248), the
Chandra Telescope Scientist (NAG8-1607), and the High Energy
Astrophysics Science Archive Center (NCC5-568).

SAO R&D Group Mailing List
--------------------------

An saord mailing list (saord-announce) have been set up using Brent
Chapman's "Majordomo" mailing list manager.  Subscribers to this list
will receive periodic status reports, release notices, and other
useful information concerning SAORD software such as DS9.  If you wish
to become a subscriber, please send an e-mail message to:

	majordomo at head-cfa.harvard.edu	

The mail should contain the following command in the body of the
message:

	subscribe saord-announce

If either you or your mailer add a signature to your mail message,
please add the following command after the "subscribe" command(s):

	end

For more information (or to complain or encourage!)
---------------------------------------------------

Please send mail to: saord at cfa.harvard.edu.  We respond to questions,
bug reports, suggestions, gripes, and encouragement ...

						Eric Mandel
						eric at cfa.harvard.edu

						William Joye
						wjoye at cfa.harvard.edu

*******************************************************************************