Previous Article
Next Article
Table of Contents

IRAF Update (1Mar96)
(from CCS, NOAO Newsletter No. 45, March 1996)

The IRAF V2.10.4 distribution for PCs running Linux has been a hot item
since its release in September 1995. In the first several months since
the release there have been roughly 275 distributions of PC-IRAF,
either from the network archive or by purchase of a CD-ROM (there have
been about 2500 total copies of IRAF V2.10 downloaded from our server
for all platforms in the past couple years). PC-IRAF users should note
that newer Linux systems, e.g., Slackware 3.0, use the ELF file format
for objects, executables, and other binaries. The September 1995
Linux/IRAF release was built using Slackware 2.3, which was an "a.out"
system. The a.out format IRAF executables will run fine on ELF-based
systems, but new programs cannot be linked because the IRAF libraries
are in a.out format, while newly compiled objects will be in ELF
format.

The next Linux/IRAF release will support ELF directly. In the meantime
a patch, p-aout.tar.gz, can be installed to work around this problem.
This patch was prepared on a Slackware 3.0 system but the ELF support
in Slackware is pretty standard, so there is a good chance the patch
will also work on other ELF-based versions of Linux. The patch is
available by anonymous ftp to iraf.noao.edu in the iraf/v210/LNUX
directory. Contact the IRAF hotline if you have further questions.

A second patch to IRAF V2.10.4 is planned and should be available by
the time this Newsletter goes out. The new patch is required to support
Solaris 2.5 and the SunSoft version 4 compilers, which were released
around December 1995. We are waiting for the arrival of all the
software and licenses from Sun before we can install the software here
and prepare the IRAF patch. This patch will also include a few minor
IRAF bug fixes made since the last patch. Hopefully this will be the
last V2.10.4 patch before IRAF V2.11 is released.

In the last issue of the NOAO Newsletter we mentioned plans to mirror
the IRAF network archive and Web pages at the RAL, courtesy of the
Starlink group in the UK. This is still under development, but by the
time this Newsletter goes to press we expect to have this initial
mirror site set up and in use. Once we have fully tested the RAL mirror
site, along with an automatic update procedure, we will look into
setting up similar mirrors at other sites around the world. The main
holdup in getting the initial mirror functioning has been reworking the
IRAF Web pages so that they will work properly when copied to a
mirror.

A new version of the X11IRAF package was demonstrated at the AAS in
January and is due for release shortly. This release will include a new
version of XIMTOOL that adds a print capability and limited file
load/save support. The print capability supports output of grayscale
and color Postscript to a printer or EPS file. The file load/save
capability will initially support only Sun rasterfiles (because they
are simple), but will eventually support a variety of PC image formats
plus FITS and the IRAF image format. Other minor enhancements are
planned. Look for an announcement of this release in the next few
weeks.

Lindsey Davis has completed and released a suite of world coordinate
driven image registration tasks including SKYCTRAN, a celestial
coordinate transformation task, and SREGISTER, a celestial world
coordinate system driven image registration task. SKYCTRAN enables
users to transform from any one of the supported celestial coordinate
systems (equatorial, ecliptic, galactic, and supergalactic) or
associated built-in IRAF coordinate systems (logical, tv, physical,
world) to any other. SREGISTER permits users to register images with
different fundamental equatorial systems (FK4, FK4-no-4, FK5, GAPPT)
and/or different equinoxes and epochs. The celestial coordinate
transformations are performed using the Starlink positional astronomy
library SLALIB which has recently been ported to IRAF. The new tasks
and a copy of SLALIB are currently available in the layered package
IMMATCH. Lindsey has also modified the IRAF world coordinate interface
to support ecliptic, galactic, and supergalactic coordinates. When
these changes are implemented in the distributed IRAF system, the
SREGISTER task will support these non-equatorial celestial coordinate
systems as well. Lindsey has also released a new layered package of
median/mode filtering routines called MFILTERS. The major new
capabiities of this package include the ability to ring median/modal
filter a list of images, and to set minimum and maximum good data
value parameters for the median/modal filters.

Frank Valdes has been working recently on tools for the automated
identification of arc-line spectra. These are nearly complete and
should be available in layered package form by the time this Newsletter
goes out. The new auto-identification facilities should greatly
simplify the process of spectral dispersion calibration. A new task for
doing astronomical calculations (such as precession and airmasses) has
been added to the ASTUTIL package on our development system. It will be
expanded shortly to provide user access to most of the astronomical
procedures in the SLALIB library. This new tool is the engine for a new
task that searches a list of images, such as a library of spectra or
observations, for those within a specified distance of a point in the
sky. Users may easily write similar types of tasks using the
astronomical calculator. The tools noted above will be available in an
external package and in the next major release.

The IRAF User's Committee met in Tucson on 6 February to review the
status of the IRAF project and to advise NOAO in setting priorities for
the IRAF project during the coming year. The IRAF User's Committee is
appointed by the NOAO Director to provide a communication link between
NOAO and the IRAF user community. The current committee members are
Jeff Pier (USNO) - Chair, Peter Eisenhardt (JPL), Andrea Prestwich
(CfA, Harvard), Bill Romanishin (Oklahoma), Bill Sparks (STScI), and
Steve Walton (CalState, Northridge). Feel free to contact the committee
members if you have any comments on the IRAF project. The committee's
report will appear in a forthcoming issue of this Newsletter.

Doug Tody and Jeannette Barnes attended the AAS meeting in San Antonio
in January and provided an IRAF demo and display for interested
participants. In particular demos were available for Frank's new
automatic spectral line identification task, Lindsey's new IMMATCH
package, and the new enhancements to XIMTOOL, described in more detail
above. Many handouts were provided including our HotSheet with major
IRAF contact information and a PC-IRAF FAQ. We look forward to this
once-a-year journey that brings us in closer touch with many of our
IRAF users.

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 on USENET provide timely information on IRAF
developments and are available for the discussion of IRAF related
issues.

Doug Tody, Jeannette Barnes

Previous Article
Next Article
Table of Contents