The IRAF V2.11 upgrade for OpenVMS running on the VAX and the DEC Alpha is now in the final stages of testing. We expect to have the system available for distribution before the end of the year. Initial testing was done with help from Space Telescope Science Institute and we would like to thank them for their assistance. With this release IRAF V2.11 platform support will be available for all the supported IRAF systems including SunOS and Solaris, Dec Alpha systems running Digital Unix V4.0, Hewlett-Packard systems running HP-UX 10.20, SGI IRIX, IBM AIX, and PC-IRAF for Slackware Linux V3.3, Red Hat Linux V5.0, and FreeBSD V2.2.5.
For our patient Mac users, we are happy to report that Apple finally released MkLinux DR3 in August and we now have this installed and configured on our development machine. The IRAF port will go forward as time permits, and will be included as part of the next release of PC-IRAF, which will provide an upgrade for all PC-IRAF platforms (e.g. RedHat Linux 5.1). In the meantime the X11IRAF tools have already been ported and are available for download from our /iraf/x11iraf archive as x11iraf-v1.1-mklinux-bin.tar.gz. Having these tools running locally will be an improvement if you rlogin to another supported IRAF platform.
With the year 2000 (Y2K) only a little more than a year away, we have been asked by many of our users if we expect any Y2K-related problems with IRAF. Initial tests with IRAF running on a time-shifted workstation proved that (as expected) IRAF would run for the most part, but we did find several Y2K-related IRAF system-level bugs which are present in the current IRAF V2.11.1 release. The bug (caused deep within the system by a date conversion routine) would prevent listing of image headers due to a buffer overflow. This bug has been fixed locally in IRAF V2.11.2 and the fix will be exported in the next public IRAF patch.
The great majority of IRAF tasks will be unaffected by the Y2K problem. Those tasks that rely on the FITS DATE-OBS keyword will need to be modified however to support the new Y2K-compliant FITS date convention. We are in the process now of planning these modifications and further Y2K testing of IRAF. A fully Y2K compliant release of IRAF is planned for early 1999. More details about IRAF and the Y2K problem are available on the web page http://iraf.noao.edu/projects/y2k, which will be updated as the Y2K project progresses.
The IRAF Web pages on http://iraf.noao.edu now have a full text Web-tree search capability. Simply type in a word or phrase and select your location (US, UK, ESO, Japan), hit <Return>, and a list of Web links to IRAF Web pages or documents containing that word or phrase will appear. This is in addition to the existing on-line search facilities (http://iraf.noao.edu/search/searches.html) available for searching help pages, mailing list discussions and so on.
The NOAO CCD Mosaic was upgraded this summer to use the new science grade SiTe CCDs. Many enhancements were made to the system, with the IRAF group providing software support for data acquisition and data handling. This included modifications to the multiextension FITS data format, the addition of on-the-fly calibration for real time image display, a new version of the Mosaic reduction package MSCRED, astrometric solutions for new SiTe chips, and DCA GUI enhancements. The data format changes consisted of keyword updates such as new astrometry coefficients. The display enhancements included quick bias and flat field calibrations while loading the display server. The new version of MSCRED is available during observing and for home installation.
For further information about the IRAF project please see the IRAF Web pages at http://iraf.noao.edu/ or send e-mail to iraf@noao.edu. The adass.iraf newsgroups (available on USENET or via a moderated mailing list which you can subscribe to by filling out a form on the IRAF Web page) provide timely information on IRAF developments and are available for the discussion of IRAF related issues.
Doug Tody, Jeannette Barnes