A public beta release of IRAF V2.11 was made available in late June. The main purpose for this beta release, aside from providing early testing of IRAF V2.11, was to support a new version of STSDAS from STScI which provides STIS and NICMOS pipeline data reductions. We expect that the final EXPORT version of V2.11 for Solaris and SunOS operating systems will be in distribution by the time this Newsletter is published. We plan to make V2.11 available for all supported IRAF platforms; distributions for these platforms will follow throughout the summer and fall. A brief summary of the V2.11 changes was included in the last issue of this Newsletter (see also http://iraf.noao.edu/v211beta.html). Detailed notes for V2.11 will be available at the time of the EXPORT release.
Much of our effort this past quarter has gone to preparation of IRAF V2.11. This has involved the efforts of the entire group. System integration was performed on the FITS image kernel, the code was extensively reworked and the new kernel was formally installed in IRAF. New versions of RFITS and WFITS with image extension support were added. The image I/O system was modified to add new or revised "imtype" and "imextn" environment variables affecting all image kernels. The IMHEADER task was revised to provide a convenient image directory feature. A number of new world coordinate system function types were added to MWCS, including support for galactic, ecliptic, and super-galactic coordinates. The graphics system (SGI graphics kernel) was enhanced to provide a more nearly publication quality character font, including support for Greek characters. Numerous old and new bugs were fixed. Work continues to update the operating system software of the IRAF platforms so that we can make V2.11 available on all the major platforms as soon as possible following the EXPORT release. Please refer to the summary of changes or the V2.11BETA system notes file for a more complete summary of what has changed.
The other major effort this past quarter was further development of the data handling system for the NOAO Mosaic. Following intensive development of the Mosaic DHS software in the late spring, the first shared risk run with Mosaic took place in early June. Although the data handling system is still in an early state, it includes a functional message bus, a data feed client for the Arcon detector used by the Mosaic, and a Data Capture Agent capable of capturing data during readout and writing multi-extension FITS files to disk. A fairly complete data reduction package MSCRED is available for processing Mosaic data. Although much work on the Mosaic data handling system is planned over the next year, the system is complete enough now to take data, perform quick look data verification, and reduce and tape the data.
Frank Valdes continues to work on the data reduction package for Mosaic. Recent work included support for the T&E and shared-risk observing, updating the software to work with V2.11, and a draft user's guide. Lindsey Davis is continuing to work on the IRAF ASTROMETRY package and related software. Last quarter she completed a new automatic star finding task called STARFIND and a new catalog object finding task called CCFIND which will be part of IRAF 2.11 and are currently available as part of the IMMATCH package. Lindsey has also been heavily involved in testing sytem changes to the image I/O and world coordinate system routines in preparation for the IRAF 2.11 release.
Rob Seaman has been working on user configuration issues for the Mosaic and on various observing support for both KPNO and CTIO. The "Save the Bits" archive (STB) continues collecting data at both observatories as well as at the Keck Observatory. Lick Observatory has installed the STB software (and dedicated tape drives) and is in the process of providing connections to the archive from pre-existing data acquisition packages. Rob is currently working on the design and implementation of the WIYN Data Archive and Distribution System, which will be based on writable CD-R media using the next version of STB.
The IRAF group will be attending the ADASS Conference in Germany in September. Several papers will be presented on the latest IRAF projects. We also plan to have an IRAF demo highlighting IRAF V2.11, the latest version of X11IRAF, portions of the Mosaic Data Handling System used for CCD data acquisition, and the distributed object and message bus data system framework being developed by NOAO. The IRAF group will be available to answer questions about the various aspects of the IRAF installations, reductions and programming tools. We hope to see you there!
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