[fitsbits] DS9 public release 3.0

[Eric Mandel]

                    DS9: Astronomical Image Display
                         Public Release 3.0
                            26 July 2004

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

Summary
-------

We are pleased to announce the availability of the new public release of
DS9 (3.0).  More information about this package (including download links)
is available at our Web site: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/saord.

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

SAOImage DS9 is an astronomical imaging and data visualization application.
DS9 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 is a stand-alone application. It requires no installation or support
files. Versions of DS9 currently exist for Sun Solaris, Sun Solaris64,
Linux, LinuxPPC, Windows NT/2000/XP, and MacOSX (darwin). All versions
and platforms support a consistent set of GUI and functional capabilities. 

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. DS9 also 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 which utilizes the 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.

New features in this release include:

* Support for composite RGB images

* Improved support for Web-based archives

* Improved plot widget support

* Large file support

* Improved support for contours

* Improved support for saving images as jpeg, tiff, png, ppm

* New Windows port

* New MacOS X port

* Background and nan/inf color support

* MPEG-1 support

* Improved mosaic support

* Improved IRAF support

* Improved regions support

* Support for older versions of Linux

For more information on new features, see:

	http://hea-www.harvard.edu/saord/ds9/new.html

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

DS9 is a stand-alone application that requires no installation or
support files. Binary executables of DS9 currently exist for Solaris,
Solaris64, Linux, LinuxPPC, MacOSX (darwin) and Windows NT/2000/XP (all
supporting a consistent set of GUI and functional capabilities).

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

DS9 was developed at SAO by the HEAD software group, with significant
help from 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)

with code contributions from:

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

and other contributors:

	Mark Adler
	Jean-loup Gailly
	D. Richard Hip
	G. Howlett
	Jan Nijtmans
	John Ousterhout

This work was performed with support from the Chandra X-ray Science
Center (NAS8-03060) and the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive
Center (NCC5-568).

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