[fitsbits] SAOImage DS9 release 5.3

[William Joye]

SAOImage DS9: Astronomical Image Display
Public Release 5.3
15 Oct 2008

Summary
---------

We are pleased to announce the availability of the new public release  
of SAOImage DS9 5.3.  More information about this package (including  
download links) is available at our web site:

http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD/ds9/

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 Solaris, Linux,  
Windows, and MacOSX . 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.

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.

New features in this release
---------

Regions: Regions now support a centroid function. The centroid  
function can be manually invoked or regions can automatically snap to  
a centroid when moved or edited. Regions now have a DASH line property.

Colorbar: Now supports a vertical colorbar layout option, via the View  
Menu. Users can configure the font type and size of the colorbar,  
again via the View Menu.

GUI: Now supports a vertical button bar, when in vertical layout mode.

MacOSX 10.5 Leopard firewall: The MacOSX Aqua 10.5 Leopard port of DS9  
can now be used with the MacOSX 10.5 firewall enabled. There are now  
two versions available for X11 MacOSX 10.5 Leopard. The non firewall  
version is recommended for all unless you wish to enable the 10.5  
firewall. In that case, please use the firewall enabled version.  
Please note: this version consist of 2 files,  ds9 and ds9.zip. It is  
very important that ds9.zip be placed in the same directory as the ds9  
binary at all times.

Contours: Contours now have a DASH line option.

Acknowledgments
---------

DS9 was developed at SAO with significant help from collaborators and  
beta test users around the world. We especially would like to  
acknowledge help from the following collaborators:

Steve Allen (UCO/Lick)
De Clarke (UCO/Lick)
Maureen Conroy (SAO)
Janet Evans (SAO)
Ian Evans (SAO)
Carlos Gabriel (ESA)
Uwe Lammers (ESA)
Terry Matilsky (Rutgers University)
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)
Dong Mink (SAO)
Doug Tody (NOAO)
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

and translations from:

Hans-Jakob Grimm (SAO)
Allan Hornstrup (DNSC)
Alberto Martins (Universidade de São Paulo)
Manuel Perez Torres (SAO)
Masahiro Tsujimoto (Penn. State)
Elaine Fortin (SAO)
Anne Lemiere(SAO)

This work was performed with support from the Chandra X-ray Science  
Center and the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Center. For  
more information, please visit our web site at:
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD/ds9/

William Joye
wjoye at cfa.harvard.edu