X11IRAF, which was initially released only for the major IRAF development platforms, was made available for all the remaining IRAF platforms (except VMS) in September. This means that the X11IRAF utilities Xgterm, Ximtool, and Xtapemon are now available for SunOS, Solaris, DEC Alpha OSF1, SGI IRIX, Linux (all supported with earlier releases), IBM AIX, Dec Ultrix, and HP/AUX (new releases). The binaries for these platforms can be found in the IRAF anonymous FTP archive on iraf.noao.edu in the /pub/v2103-beta directory.
The September release was only to round out the X11IRAF platform support and did not include any substantive feature enhancements. This was a side benefit of a new version of X11IRAF, which is still under development. The upcoming release will include a major new version of Ximtool, will add man pages for all X11IRAF utilities, and will include more complete and portable Imake-based build procedures to make it easier for users to build the package on new platforms. When this version is released the distribution directory will move from /pub to /iraf/x11iraf so keep an eye on this directory for the new software. We will post an announcement to the adass.iraf.announce newsgroup when this new version of X11IRAF becomes available. If you are a registered IRAF user and we have your current email address you will be notified of its release through this newsgroup mailing list. Progress and announcements for the X11IRAF project can also be monitored through its Web page at http://iraf.noao.edu/projects/x11iraf.
As mentioned in the last Newsletter all registered IRAF users were added to the mailing list associated with the adass.iraf.announce newsgroup. This went very well and subsequently a number of people even subscribed to additional ADASS newsgroup mailing lists. Not surprisingly the first postings to the full list revealed that about 10% of our IRAF subscribers email addresses (100-200 addresses) were out of date or otherwise invalid, and the bad addresses had to be removed. If you are a registered IRAF user and your email address has changed please feel free to re-register (which will auto-subscribe you) or contact us at iraf@noao.edu to update your subscription information. You may also subscribe to additional newsgroup mailing lists through our online registration or ADASS newsgroup Web pages on http://iraf.noao.edu.
Along with other system projects such as X11IRAF, various V2.11 release-related development work, and Open IRAF, the data handling system for the NOAO mosaic continues to be our current major IRAF systems project. The focus for this past quarter was on the data processing subsystem. This is exciting as it will have a message-based, distributed, heterogeneous architecture of the sort emphasized by Open IRAF, and will introduce new technology in IRAF for characterizing CCD data using pixel masks and uncertainty modeling. A write-up detailing what this will consist of is in preparation. See the discussion below for further information, or contact Doug Tody or Frank Valdes for the details.
If you are looking for IRAF-related software that is not part of the main IRAF distribution, there are two directories in our anonymous FTP archive on iraf.noao.edu that you may want to look through. The /iraf/extern directory contains add-on or layered software packages from the NOAO/IRAF group---these are often beta releases of new software packages that will eventually migrate into the main IRAF system at a later date. The other directory is the /contrib directory. This is a directory containing user contributed software from outside the IRAF group. There is a wide range of software available in the /contrib directory and you can browse the current contents through our Web page at http://iraf.noao.edu/contrib. Any user wishing to contribute software here is welcome to do so, all we ask is that you include a "readme" file for each package explaining what it is and whom to contact. Dropping a note to iraf@noao.edu will also allow us to include the package in the general description of the directory and the Web pages.
Mike Fitzpatrick has been working hard for the past few months on the X11IRAF and Ximtool enhancements and continues to be the primary contact for IRAF technical support. Nelson Zarate has been working on improvements to the FITS image kernel and on the OpenVMS IRAF port, an early version of which is in use at STScI for the HST pipeline. A beta test, shared image based distribution of the FITS image kernel is available in the IRAF archives for experimenting with the new image kernel on selected platforms.
Lindsey Davis is continuing to work on the new IRAF astrometry package. As part of that work she has completed initial development and testing of a library of digital image centering routines, and is investigating methods and user interfaces for local and remote catalog access.
Frank Valdes is working on the design of the data format and data reduction software for the NOAO CCD Mosaic. The design of the data processing software is nearly complete, and we hope to have portions of the new mosaic reduction software (plus parts of the messaging system for data capture) working by December. The ADASS conference provided an important opportunity to discuss this work with other interested parties. Frank is also part of a team taking data with the KPNO Coudé Feed telescope to create a high resolution (approximately one Angstrom resolution) library of stellar spectra covering the spectral types, luminosity classes, and metallicities. This library will be made available to the community. He was at the telescope this quarter taking data for this project. This work allows him to have personal research experience with the IRAF CCD and spectroscopy software he develops and supports.
Rob Seaman is working on the FINDER package update. FINDER is an internal NOAO package for overlaying the HST guide star coordinates on a displayed image, interactively measuring the stellar X,Y coordinates from the image display and then passing the resulting equatorial and pixel coordinates to a plate solver. This is normally used for generating target coordinates for multi-object spectrograph observing runs. The updated package will add Lindsey Davis's new CCMAP plate solver task as another option to the Starlink ASTROM program that was previously used. A new task DSSFINDER will allow overlaying GSC sources on the STScI Digital Sky Survey scans with minimal user input, permitting the plate solution to be recomputed as a standard IRAF world coordinate system. Various smaller improvements have been implemented. Rob continues to support CCD data acquisition at KPNO and the NOAO/IRAF Save the Bits archive in a variety of ways. An update of Save the Bits to support recordable CDR as an archival format is in progress.
The annual Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems Conference (ADASS) was held in Charlottesville, Virginia in late September, and all the IRAF group members attended. Papers on current IRAF projects were presented at the meeting:
Lindsey Davis, "A Library of Digital Image Centering Routines for IRAF"
Mike Fitzpatrick, "Automatic Mirroring of the IRAF FTP and WWW Archives"
Rob Seaman, "Asteroseismology - Data Acquisition and Reduction for a SONG"
Rob Seaman, "WIYN Data Distribution and Archiving"
Doug Tody, "The Data Handling System for the NOAO Mosaic"
Frank Valdes, "Data Format for the NOAO Mosaic"
Frank Valdes, "IRAF CCD Reduction Software for the NOAO Mosaic"
An important part of ADASS are the many Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions that are held during the meeting---parallel sessions on special topics that run about 1½ hours. The IRAF BOF is a regular feature of the ADASS, attended by a variety of IRAF users and programmers. This year's IRAF BOF was chaired by Bob Hanisch and had about 60 enthusiastic attendees. Several very interesting invited and "focus" talks were presented by IRAF users and developers from sites around the world. A highlight of the BOF was a talk by Pat Wallace on Starlink and Starlink-IRAF collaboration in the UK. This was followed by a talk by Doug Tody outlining system developments and plans for IRAF over the next few years. A short question and answer period wrapped up the evening.
An IRAF Developer's Workshop was held on the day following the ADASS Conference. This workshop provides an opportunity for groups that are doing IRAF development outside the IRAF Group to get together with the IRAF group members and discuss programming issues. About 45 developers attended the IDW.
We do not plan to have a computer demo at the AAS meeting in Toronto this year, but we do plan to have a table with handouts and a poster display as part of the NOAO presentation, so please drop by. We value the discussions with our users at the AAS meetings, but this year time and money are at a premium and we decided that we should stay in Tucson and try to get some work done! If time and money permit perhaps we will see you in Washington in January 1998.
For further information about the IRAF project please see the IRAF Web pages at http://iraf.noao.edu/ or send email to iraf@noao.edu. The adass.iraf newsgroups on USENET provide timely information on IRAF developments and are available for the discussion of IRAF related issues.
Doug Tody, Jeannette Barnes