Starlink Software Collection - Keoe Release Notes

General Changes

• Starlink applications no longer break if the ".sdf" file extension is included.
• The Starlink software now works on 64-bit operating systems.
• A new version of the file I/O library (HDS) has been released that now supports files larger than 512MB. Files larger than 2GB are now supported on 32-bit systems (but data arrays must be less than 2GB). On 64-bit systems data arrays larger than 2GB can now be accessed.
• Most Starlink applications now run correctly from a Bourne shell (such as bash). Source /star/etc/profile rather than /star/etc/login.
• Whilst this is not a user visible change, the Starlink software now builds using standard GNU autotools (configure, make) and is freely available for download via anonymous CVS. See this page for further information on building the Starlink Software Collection.

Changes to Applications

• KAPPA

  • New Commands:
    • CHANMAP - Creates a two-dimensional tiled map of channels from a three-dimensional NDF.
    • CLINPLOT - Draws a spatial grid of line plots for an axis of a cube NDF.
    • INTERLEAVE - Forms a higher-resolution NDF by interleaving a set of NDFs.
    • MAKESNR - Creates a signal-to-noise array from an NDF with defined Variance component, rejecting small variances.
    • MFITTREND - Fits independent polynomial trends to data lines that are parallel to an axis.
    • NDFCOMPRESS - Compresses an NDF so that it occupies less disk space.
    • WCSMOSAIC - Aligns and co-adds a group of NDFs using WCS information.
  • Modified Commands:
    • COLLAPSE now supports many new estimators specifically targetted at cube analysis.
    • CURSOR can now display the pixel value at each selected position.
    • BLOCK, CONVOLVE, and GAUSMOOTH can smooth the planes in a cube independently applying the same filtering to each plane.
    • REGRID and WCSALIGN now have facilities for flux conservation.
    • HISTOGRAM can now generate a cumulative histogram.

• GAIA

  • Enhanced cube handling.
    • Now includes a realtime spectral extraction and plotting tool.
      • Features point and region extraction.
    • Has improved cube slice display, now much faster and works on FITS cubes.
    • Creates and displays channel maps.
    • Interactive baseline subtraction.
    • Cube slices can now be operated on by all the image analysis toolboxes.
  • Updated to Skycat 2.4.7 and latest Tcl/Tk libraries.
    • Display of MEFs as single image.
  • Added UCAC2 catalogue.
  • Updated to work with latest EXTRACTOR package.
  • Interoperates with VO-enabled applications using the PLASTIC protocol.

• CONVERT

  • FITS2NDF has a new TYPE group parameter to set the data type of the NDF, overriding the value propagated from the FITS BITPIX, or BSCALE asnd BZERO precision when FMTCNV is TRUE.
  • NDF2FITS now supports multi-NDFs HDS container files through the new CONTAINER and MERGE parameters. Improved propagation of existing world co-ordinate system (WCS) headers in NDF2FITS.
  • SPECX2NDF now creates NDF files using the new double-sideband SpecFrame.
  • FITSGZ is a new on-the-fly conversion format for GZIP-compressed FITS files. The recognised extensions are fits.gz, fit.gz, and fts.gz.
  • Added FITS-AIPS++ and FITS-CLASS encodings to FITS2NDF and NDF2FITS.

• DATACUBE

  • General Changes:
    • The package applications COPYAXIS, GETBOUND, and PUTAXIS have been withdrawn, replaced by existing KAPPA commands.
    • The scripts have been generalised to spectral co-ordinate systems other than Wavelength in Angstrom. Units are reported too.
    • A bug displacing by +1 pixel negative pixel indices determined by the cursor has been fixed.
    • Spectrum plots now use the histogram style for greater clarity.
    • Improved and updated the User Guide (SUN/237) and the IFU Data-Product Cookbook (SC/16).
    • Accepts .sdf extension and/or allows NDF sections to be supplied.
  • New Commands:
    • GRIDSPEC - Averages and plots groups of spatially neighbouring spectra of a three-dimensional NDF.
    • VELMOMENT - Builds a velocity map from the collapsed intensity-weighted spectral co-ordinates. It supports spatial compression.
  • Modified Commands:
    • MULTISTACK and STACKER - plot ordinate limits now always make visible all the spectra, regardless of the chosen offset.
    • PEAKMAP and VELMAP - now have -c option to specify the number of contour levels to plot; this may be zero to prevent contours be overlaid.
    • STEP - now plots the image slices in an optimally shaped grid rather than full size in quick succession.
    • VELMAP - generalised the transformation of the measured line displacements from the rest-frame co-ordinate in the current spectral system into one of four velocity measurements. Also recognises the SKY-DSBSPECTRUM Domain. Added the -s option to define the co-ordinate system of the derived velocities. Changed lower percentile for display from 15 to 2. Now uses a spectrum colour table. Plot now has a velocity key. Added -ci option to specify the colour index of contours.

• EXTRACTOR

  • Updated to SExtractor version 2.4.4.

• SPLAT

  • Now called SPLAT-VO as it includes prototype access to spectral Virtual Observatory servers.
  • Can compare spectra that have different flux systems(currently flux per unit frequency and per unit wavelength), as well as coordinate systems (wavelength, frequency, energy and velocity).
  • Spectra can now be drawn using point markers (cross, dot square etc.).
  • Statistics in defined region toolbox.
  • Transformation between data units.
  • New toolbox for for transforming spectra by a redshift or by a flip and or translation has been introduced. Works on many spectra.
  • The grid drawn around the spectra can now be forced to remain within the plot window so the axes can always be seen at all zooms.
  • Postscript output can now be made as encapsulated.
  • Graphics printing includes PNG format.
  • Dual sideband data has both bands coordinates shown and are switchable.
  • Line identifiers can now include data units and can be loaded when matched to the displayed spectrum.
  • New smoothing filters, Hanning, Hamming, Welch and Barlett.
  • And more...

• ORAC-DR

  • Added support for spectropolarimetry.
  • Added support for WFCAM via the oracdr_swfcam command, including automated astrometry correction and image quality calculations.
  • Various minor improvements and bug fixes.

New Applications

• CUPID

  CUPID ("ClUmP IDentification) can be used for identifying clumps of emission in 1D, 2D or 3D data arrays. Whilst primarily targeted at the needs of the SCUBA2 advanced data products pipeline, it follows the Starlink pattern of being instrument-independent, so may have other uses. The package is not yet feature complete.

Changes to Libraries

• AST

  • New Classes, the most important of which are:
    • TimeFrame: A sub-class of Frame that describes a time axis, allowing conversion between various different units, time systems and time-scales.
    • DSBSpecFrame: A sub-class of SpecFrame that can be used to describe dual sideband data.
    • Region: An abstract class that describes a region within a coordinate Frame. There are several different concrete sub-classes of Region such as Box, Circle, Ellipse, Polygon.
    • STC: An abstract class that provides experimental support for representing IVOA Space-Time-Coordinate structures. Several concrete sub-classes are provided to represent different flavours of STC object.
    • XmlChan: A sub-class of Channel that uses an XML description to describe AST objects externally. This includes facilities to create STC objects from some of the XML representation defined by the IVOA.
    • SwitchMap: A sub-class of Mapping that allows different Mappings to be used to transform positions in different regions of the input coordinate space.
    • FluxFrame: A 1-dimensional sub-class of Frame that describes various different astronomical flux systems.
    • SpecFluxFrame: A 2-dimensional sub-class of CmpFrame that combines a FluxFrame and a SpecFrame, allowing consistent conversion between different flux and spectral systems.
    • KeyMap: A class that allows a collection of numbers, text strings and Objects to be stored within a single Object, with each element being accessed by a textual key.
  • The SkyFrame class can now represent Az-El coordinates, and can also represent spherical offsets from a specified reference point.
  • The Plot class can now include super-scripts, sub-scripts, etc, within text labels (e.g. "h", "m" and "s" characters in sexagesimal RA values).
  • The FitsChan class now includes support for common encodings used by the AIPS++ and CLASS software systems.
  • AST is now shipped with a minimal cut-down version of the C SLALIB library, meaning that SLALIB is no longer required as an external dependency.
  • A flux-conservation option has been added to the astResample method, and a new method called astRebin has been added which provides an alternative to astResample that naturally conserves flux.
  • A good number of bug fixes and other functionality enhancements.

• HDS

  • An official C interface is now provided.
  • For core HDS functionality, Fortran is no longer required.
  • Support for files greater than 512MB.

• GRP

  • An official C interface is now provided.

• NDG

  • An official C interface is now provided.

It is recommended that all applications that use any libraries be rebuilt from source.

STARJAVA

The STARJAVA applications and libraries were built using Java version 1.4.2. A version of the Java runtime environment of at least this level is required to make use of them.

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