[fitsbits] Rendering FITS Data

[Grinder]

"Doug Mink" <dmink at cfa.harvard.edu> wrote in message
news:mailman.1066667341.6791.fitsbits at listmgr.cv.nrao.edu...
> Grinder wrote:
> >
> > For astronomers, what are some of the more useful
data-to-color
> > transformations?  I'm having difficulty resolving
> > domain-specific vocabulary, so I hope I'm not being
> > confusing -- it has certainly stymied my attempts to google
> > this information.
>
> As one of those who just got back from ADASS in Strasbourg,
I'll
> add the ways which the venerable SAOimage program (which I
maintain
> at http://tdc-www.harvard.edu/software/saoimage/ ) converts
from
> FITS input data to 8-bit display pixels.  It supports linear
> (a linear scale from the minimum value at 0 and the maximum
at 256),
> square root, log, wrap (which produces a sort of contour
image),
> and histogram.  The histogram can be clipped at the ends to
emphasize
> the middle values.  All of the code is in C in the sclmap.c
file
> of the source code which is available through the page cited
above.

Thank you Steve, Doug and Patrick.