[fitsbits] SAOImage DS9 release 6.0

[William Joye]

SAOImage DS9: Astronomical Image Display
Public Release 6.0
15 Jan 2010

Summary
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We are pleased to announce the availability of the new public release of SAOImage DS9 6.0.  More information about this package (including  download links) is available at our web site: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD/ds9/

DS9 Description
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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.

New features in this release
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Mosaics 

The default load mosaic image mode is now WCS (previously, it  was  IRAF). IRAF mosaic images are now laid out base 
on the first segment  loaded, just as with WCS mosaics.

Datacube 

DS9 now supports FITS images up to 10 dimensions. If more than 3  dimensions of data are available, DS9 will display a modified datacube  dialog which allow the user to select which values for each dimension to select the appropriate image to display. In addition, the user can specify which axis to be used as the current axis when stepping through the datacube.

RGB Frames 

Contours are now implemented on a per channel basis. In addition, if a  datacube is loaded, the current slice is also implemented on a per  channel basis.

WCS CAR projection 

DS9 will correctly display CAR projection grids for images which  conform to the  FITS WCS standard.

Analysis 

Two new macros have been added: $filedialog(open) and $filedialog(save), which when invoked, will display the standard open file or standard save file  dialog box and return the selected filename.

I18N

DS9 will now search for environment variables LC_MESSAGES, LC_ALL,  and LANG to determine the GUI language.