[fitsbits] SAOImage DS9 release 5.6

[William Joye]

SAOImage DS9: Astronomical Image Display
Public Release 5.6
15 Apr 2009

Summary
---------

We are pleased to announce the availability of the new public release  
of SAOImage DS9 5.6.  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
---------

X11 MacOSX 10.5

Support for X11 MacOSX 10.5 Leopard has been reduced to only one  
version which can be used with or without the Leopard firewall  
enabled. 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.

VOTable Catalogs

The Catalog tool can now load and save catalogs in VOTable format.

SAMP

DS9 now supports SAMP (Simple Application Messaging Protocol). FITS  
images and Catalogs may be exchanged with other application who  
support SAMP such as TOPCAT and ALADIN.

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