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See [[ http://www.oracdr.org/oracdr/2014AChangeLog ]] See [[ https://www.eao.hawaii.edu/oracdr/2014AChangeLog ]]

Starlink Software Collection - 2014A Release Notes

Highlights

  • Many new features to enable SCUBA-2 map making with high fidelity.
  • Updated SCUBA-2 Data Reduction Cookbook reflecting the improvements.
  • Improved heterodyne filtering of bad spectra.
  • Major changes and enhancements to the TOPCAT graphics.

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 defaults for parameters FellWalker.MinDip and FellWalker.MinHeight have changed.

  • FINDCLUMPS and EXTRACTCLUMPS can now create catalogues in the form needed for ingestion into the JCMT Science Archive (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.
  • It is now possible to display positions and shapes from a KAPPA/CUPID-style catalogue whose coordinates are galactic over an image in the same system.
  • 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 two-dimensional 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" kernel in resampling mode as well as rebinning mode.

ORAC-DR

See https://www.eao.hawaii.edu/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 default values provided by dimmconfig.lis for MAKEMAP configuration parameters noi.box_size and noi.box_type have changed. In addition dimmconfig.lis now uses the new hitslimit parameter.
  • The default values provided by dimmconfig_bright_extended.lis for MAKEMAP configuration parameters flt.filt_edge_largescale, ast.zero_snr and ast.zero_snrlo have changed. In addition, dimmconfig_bright_extended.lis now uses the new ast.skip parameter.
  • Two new config parameter files have been added: dimmconfig_fix_blobs.lis and dimmconfig_fix_convergence.lis. These are intended to be used with one of the existing dimmconfig files. They provide new values for selected parameters aimed at solving a particular problem ("blobs" in the final map, or very slow convergence).
  • 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

  • The major change in this release is improved support for more complex SSAP queries. For instance you can now create server groups for more targeted queries according to the waveband or data source (theory/archive/survey for instance), as well as using your specific tags to create such groups.
  • It is now also possible to add additional metadata parameters to the queries for the currently selected server list.
  • New SSAP servers not currently registered can now be added manually.
  • Access control for servers that use HTTP passwords is now implemented
  • It is now possible to switch columns for spectra stored as as a single row in the vector cell format.
  • Column selection for tables now prefers those with the UCD meta.main.
  • The column name used to select spectral coordinates in tables lacking other metadata has changed from "wavelength" to "wave".
  • Bug fixes:
    • There was a memory issue that prevented printing more than about 24 plots.
    • Statistics can now be determined for multiple ranges for a reversed spectral axis.
    • Utype matching now works for fluxaxis utypes.
    • Filtering with the standard spectral profiles uses the average channel spacing rather than one X coordinate unit.
    • Changing the spectral coordinates column of a table is now visible immediately.
    • Celestial coordinates axes could be misidentified some circumstances, such as for dual-side-beam spectral frames with permuted axes.
    • If the SSAP server maximum record limit is reached (MAXREC), SPLAT will no longer return an error, it just continues downloading spectra to the available limit.
    • The BAND parameter now handles the case when the upper limit is null.
    • TARGETNAME values are now correctly encoded to allow the use of special characters ($+$ etc.)

TOPCAT

  • Version 4.2. For a summary of the changes see the release notes from Version 4.0 inclusive.

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)