Much of the work this quarter has been split between two major projects: preparation for the upcoming release of IRAF V2.11, and ongoing work on the NOAO Mosaic data handling system.
Beta-testing of V2.11 began in March. We plan two beta releases before the public release, currently targeted for late May. The beta-1 release includes most user interface and science applications changes, and the major (i.e. risky) system bug fixes and other revisions. Beta-2 will include some isolated new features such as the FITS image kernel and related FITS and image support. After limited internal testing within the IRAF group the beta-1 release went to the major outside IRAF development sites in early April, and following extensive initial in-house testing was installed for staff testing on the major NOAO servers in late April. Beta testing has thus far gone very well.
The V2.11 release is being closely coordinated with the STSDAS group at STScI, which will be simultaneously releasing a new version of STSDAS to provide support for STIS and NICMOS pipeline reductions. V2.11 will be released first for SunOS and Solaris, as a single sharable distribution supporting both systems. Releases for all other supported IRAF platforms will follow throughout the summer, with the major platforms following as soon as possible after the initial release. We have done a lot of work over the last year updating all the IRAF platforms so that we can make V2.11 available on all platforms as soon as possible after the release cycle begins. A summary of the new features and enhancements in the V2.11 release can be found in an accompanying article in this section of the Newsletter.
The new version of X11IRAF announced in the last IRAF Update is is now available from the IRAF network archives ( iraf.noao.edu) in the iraf/x11iraf directory. Manual pages have been added for xgterm, ximtool, and xtapemon. Ximtool has many new features: hardcopy capability (encapsulated PostScript files can be sent to a PostScript printer or saved to a file); images can be loaded into the display operating as a stand-alone image browser (currently IRAF, FITS, GIF and Sun Rasterfile images are supported); displayed images can be saved to disk; online hypertext help has been added; keystroke accelerators are available for common operations; and much more. The x11iraf directory was updated on 5 April with bug fixes for problems reported after the initial release in mid-March, so if you downloaded x11iraf shortly after the initial announcement you may want to update your installation.
Mike Fitzpatrick has completed work on a client display library (CDL) that will allow host C or Fortran programs to display images or draw into the graphics overlay using the ximtool image server and image viewers that emulate the ximtool client protocol such as SAOtng, SAOimage, and IPAC Skyview. CDL provides most of the algorithms and functionality found in standard IRAF tasks such as DISPLAY and TVMARK, but provides these in library form for use in host level user programs, much as the IMFORT library provides access to IRAF images on disk. CDL may be used in IMFORT programs or in any host program needing an image display/marking capability. CDL is available from the /iraf/x11iraf directory in the IRAF network archives. CDL development was supported in part by the Open IRAF initiative, which is funded by a NASA ADP grant.
We are pleased to announce that ESO and Japan now join the UK as IRAF mirror sites. We would like to thank these sites for their help in making IRAF information and distributions more accessible over the network to our non-US users. All mirror sites are updated from the Tucson archives on a nightly basis.
Japan WWW Mirror:
http://sinobu.mtk.nao.ac.jp/iraf/web/
UK WWW Mirror: http://star-www.rl.ac.uk/iraf
UK FTP Mirror: ftp://star.rl.ac.uk/pub/iraf
ESO FTP Mirror: ftp://ecf.hq.eso.org/iraf
ESO WWW Mirror: http://ecf.hq.eso.org/iraf/web
Work on the NOAO Mosaic data handling system (DHS) has concentrated on ongoing work on data reductions, and on data capture including development of the message-bus infrastructure. An early version of the message bus, a data capture agent (DCA), and a message bus data feed for the Arcon have been completed. The DCA is instrument independent, using a keyword translation module implemented as a Tcl script to map instrument keywords into the data dictionary used by the Mosaic DHS. The DCA directly writes multi-extension FITS files suitable for archiving and other post-processing including IRAF-based data reduction using the FITS image kernel to access the archival data. Recent work on Mosaic data reductions has concentrated on development of the keyword translation module, on image combination, and on astrometry, including calibration of the new wide field prime focus corrector for the 4-m telescope. A new overview paper for the Mosaic DHS is now available via the Mosaic DHS web page, http://iraf.noao.edu/projects/mosaic.
Nelson Zarate is developing the FITS image kernel, and is currently working on a new IRAF library to be used by various tasks to access multiple extension FITS files (MEF). This set of routines will manipulate FITS files with multiple extensions using file-type operations at a lower level than the image i/o (pixel matrix) interface where the FITS kernel operates. The MEF interface will allow an application developer to write SPP programs that handle a set of extensions at any one time. Some new IRAF tasks are planned for operations such as extracting extensions into files or inserting files into MEF files.
Lindsey Davis is continuing to work on the IRAF ASTROMETRY package and related software. Last quarter she modified the IRAF surface fitting library and used the new library to investigate the astrometric properties of the NOAO Mosaic. She also completed a task for converting Cartesian pixel and standard coordinates to polar pixel and standard coordinates. Lindsey also completed the reorganization of the IMAGES and PROTO packages in preparation for the IRAF V2.11 release.
Frank Valdes continues to devote most of his time to software for the NOAO Mosaic. First versions of the basic data reduction and data formatting software are nearing completion. Outside of this effort he has written two new spectroscopy tasks for doing telluric removal and sky subtraction and improved the spectral calibration tools to allow the user a choice of dispersion units throughout the data reductions.
Rob Seaman continued his work with the ICE CCD data acquisition software and other observing environment issues, and with the KPNO and CTIO "save the bits" archives. He is currently working on the WIYN CD-ROM based archive and data distribution system. The FINDER package update (discussed in the last issue of this Newsletter) is in internal beta testing. This software will be chiefly used within NOAO for observing support for the Hydra multi-object spectrogragh and other astrometric work.
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