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=== NDG ===

 * Add C wrappers for NDF_MOREG and NDF_NDFCO.
 * ndg_provenance has a bug fixed which could cause the size of provenance information to grow exponentially when processing a large number of input NDFs such as with KAPPA:WCSALIGN. It also now distinguishes zero-length strings from NULL pointers.

Starlink Software Collection - 2014A Release Notes

Highlights

General

  • All documents are now in PDF form rather than Postscript.
  • Perl
    • Upgraded to version 5.18.2.
    • Added Astro::ITC::SCUBA2 and UKIRT::Archive modules.
    • Updated JSA and JCMT::Tau modules.

Restored Applications

  • POLMAP has been put back in to the Starlink software collection following a user request. It has been ported to 64-bit.

Changes to Applications

ATOOLS

  • New commands:
    • ASTADDVARIANT stores a new variant Mapping for the current Frame in a FrameSet.

    • ASTCONVEX creates a new Polygon representing the convex hull of a two-dimensional data grid.
    • ASTGETUNC obtains positional uncertainty information from a Region.
    • ASTMIRRORVARS makes the current Frame in a FrameSet mirror the variant Mappings in another Frame.

    • ASTPRISM creates a Prism, which is a Region that represents an extrusion of an existing Region into one or more orthogonal dimensions.
  • Modified commands:
    • ASTCOPY has new a CLASS parameter to specify the class of the output object.
    • ASTOUTLINE
      • now reports the number of vertices in the returned polygon and writes it to a new NVERT output parameter; and
      • can create a polygon in the current NDF frame via a new parameter called CURRENT.
    • ASTRAN2 now writes the last position to XVAL and YVAL output parameters.
    • ASTUNFORMAT now writes the unformatted value to a new DVAL output parameter

CONVERT

  • NDF2FITS has a new boolean parameter called ALLOWTAB to control the storage of tabular co-ordinates using the FITS TAB algorithm.
  • NDF2FITS will no longer abort once it encounters an invalid WCS header.

CUPID

  • Columns in the log file should no longer run into each other.
  • MAKECLUMPS can now put clumps on a regular grid.
  • MAKECLUMPS can now create an extra catalogue holding the properties of the clumps before convolution with the beam.
  • FINDCLUMPS no longer reports an error if no clumps are found.
  • FINDCLUMPS no longer prompts for the RMS parameter if an RMS value is supplied in the configuration.
  • FINDCLUMPS and EXTRACTCLUMPS can now create catalogues in the form needed for ingestion into the JSA.
  • FINDBACK has a new parameter "WLIM" that specifies the faction of good input pixels in a filter box needed to create a good output pixel.

FLUXES

  • Heterodyne wavelengths (434, 868 and 1300 microns) added to the scuba2.dat file.

GAIA

  • There is a new toolbox for displaying histograms of rectangular regions of the displayed image.
  • It is now possible to load a list of positions into the aperture-photometry toolbox.
  • Various abandoned Skycat catalogues have been removed from the default list. Some of these have been replaced with Vizier equivalents.
  • NED object searches have been changed to use the NED service directly, rather than the retired ESO equivalents.
  • Bug fixes:
    • A serious bug stopped images with modified astrometries from being saved to disk
    • Printing of the colour ramp could cause GAIA to exit (introduced at 4.4-2)
    • A long-standing bug prevented printing the main image to PostScript when logged into a machine remotely and only for certain zoom and scroll positions.

    • Saving the graphics toolbox context in world coordinates did not work correctly for the circle, ellipse and rotbox types.

KAPPA

  • New applications:
    • EXCLUDEBAD: shuffles rows or columns in an NDF to exclude entirely bad rows or columns.
  • Modified commands:
    • ARDPLOT: Can now display a plot on an empty graphics device.
    • BEAMFIT: More control on the initial or fixed sizes and shapes of the beams.
    • BEAMFIT: The output parameters now store the statistics of every fitted beam, not just those of the primary beam.
    • CENTROID: Now normalises displayed RA and Dec values into the usual ranges.
    • COPYBAD: Now writes the number of good and bad output pixels to a pair of output parameters.
    • DISPLAY: New scaling mode "Current" allows previous scaling to be re-used.
    • ERASE: New option not to report an error if the specified object does not exist.
    • GDCLEAR: Now truncates the graphics database file if the device is cleared.
    • HISTOGRAM: New option to specify the bin width instead of the number of bins.
    • MFITTREND: Can now preserve the fit where the input data is bad.
    • NDFECHO: Non-existent NDFs can now be removed from the displayed list of NDF paths.
    • NORMALIZE: Can now normalise each row or column of a 2D NDF independently.
    • OUTSET: Now uses the USEAXIS parameter correctly.
    • PASTE: Fix bug in output WCS if pixel origin is changed.
    • SCATTER: Now writes the number of pixels used to an output parameter
    • SETQUAL: Can now copy Quality array and names from a supplied template NDF.
    • WCSALIGN: Can now use the "Gauss" kernal in resampling mode as well as rebinning mode.

ORAC-DR

See http://www.oracdr.org/oracdr/2014AChangeLog

SMURF

  • Added a new utility FITSMERGE to merge FITS headers.
  • New command CHECKCOORDS checks the detector coordinates stored in a raw ACSIS time series cube for consistency.
  • New command JSASPLIT re-projects a supplied image or cube onto the JSA all-sky pixel grid and then dices it up into separate JSA tiles.
  • New command JSAJOIN re-projects a set of JSA tiles onto the pixel grid of a supplied image or cube, and then co-adds them into a single NDF.
  • New command JSADICER dices an NDF into separate JSA tiles (the NDF must already use the JSA all-sky pixel grid).
  • New command JSATILEINFO returns information about the shape, size and location of a specified JSA tile.
  • New command JSATILELIST lists the JSA tiles that overlap a supplied sky region or data set.
  • MAKEMAP should now also write the OUTFILES parameter when METHOD=ITERATE.
  • MAKEMAP now does a more accurate estimation of the amount of memory required.
  • Several new configuration parameters added to MAKEMAP, including:
    • ast.skip - omit the AST model on the a specified number of initial iterations.
    • chunkweight - allow maps from different chunks to be weighted differently.
    • com.freeze_flags - allows the flagged of data by the COM model to be frozen after a specified number of iterations.
    • com.sig_limit - controls rejection of time slices for which the four sub-arrays show very different common-modes.
    • flt.filt_order - allow the FLT model to be determinded using a soft-edged Butterworth filter.
    • flt.ring_box1 - enables a filter that identifies and flags time samples that cause ringing in the FLT model.
    • hitslimit - specified the minimum number of hits required to produce a good map pixel.
    • xxx.zero_snr_hipass - applied a spatial high-pass filter to the SNR map before using it to determine a mask.
    • xxx.zero_snr_lopass - applied a spatial low-pass filter to the SNR map before using it to determine a mask.
    • xxx.zero_snr_ffclean - create a mask using an algorithm like kappa:ffclean instead of a simple SNR cut.
  • MAKEMAP has the following new ADAM parameters:
    • JSATILES - indicates that the map should use the JSA all-sky pixel grid and should be diced into separate JSA tiles.
    • ITERMAPS - allows the maps created on each iteration to be written to a separate NDF, rather than to the main output NDF.
    • INTOPTION - allows the current map to be saved if the makemap process receives an interrupt signal (e.g. control-C).
  • The parameters defining the JSA all-sky pixel grid have been updated.
  • Various bug fixes and improvements to the SKYLOOP command.
  • Development of FTS-2 software, including the addition of the FTS2MASKMAP program.
  • MAKECUBE now reports an error if no output cubes can be created.
  • MAKECUBE has the following new ADAM parameters:
    • POSERRFATAL - if TRUE, an error is reported if any inconsistency is found between detector positions implied by RECEPPOS and FPLANEXY.
    • JSATILES - indicates that the cube should use the JSA all-sky pixel grid and should be diced into separate JSA tiles.

SPLAT

TSP

  • Works with 64-bit addressing.
  • SUN/66 builds, but hypertext parameters are still wrong due to use of plain TeX.

New Libraries

CVG

A library containing utility functions concerned with data format conversion. Mainly re-factored from the CONVERT package.

Changes to Libraries

AGI

  • New routine AGI_TRUNC truncates the graphics database by freeing unused space.

AST

  • AST is now released under the Lesser GNU Public Licence.
  • The API for astRebinSeq<X> has been changed in order to it handle arrays with more than 2^31 pixels.

  • The Polygon class has a new method to convex hull enclosing a specified set of pixel values within a supplied array.
  • The inverse transformation within FITS headers that including SIP-format distortion is ignored, and a new inverse transformation is determined from the forward transformation.
  • The default options for new FitsChans can now be specified via the environment variable FITSCHAN_OPTIONS.

  • Bug fixes:
    • A bug has been fixed that could over-write the FitsChan CarLin attribute with a non-zero value if the header contains a spectral axis.

    • Fix support for reading GLS projections from FITS headers.
    • Fix to interpretation of FITS CDELT keywords in cases where CTYPE includes no projection code.

KAPLIBS

  • New generic KPG_STOCx calculates clipped ordered statistics.
  • New routine kpgPutOutline creates and stores an STC polygon describing the spatial extent of an NDF. The region may be a convex hull enclosing specified pixels.
  • The random number seed can now be set via environment variable STAR_SEED.
  • A single graphics attribute can now include multiple qualifiers (e.g. "colour(ticks,border)=red").
  • kpgGtobj can now create an AST Region describing the coverage of a supplied NDF.
  • KPG1_WRCAT can store arbitrary headers in the output catalogue.
  • KPG1_CORRx has a new argument which returns the number of used points.
  • Bug fixes:
    • CCG_FLX1 where the width was not squared in the variance calculations, and hence the affected the integ estimator in various KAPPA tasks.
    • Extend the histogram to prevent loss of data in KPG1_OPGR1.
    • Fixed a memory leak in kpg1Kygp1.

NDG

  • Add C wrappers for NDF_MOREG and NDF_NDFCO.
  • ndg_provenance has a bug fixed which could cause the size of provenance information to grow exponentially when processing a large number of input NDFs such as with KAPPA:WCSALIGN. It also now distinguishes zero-length strings from NULL pointers.

PAL

Documentation

Starlink: 2014A (last edited 2020-09-23 18:57:20 by MalcolmCurrie)