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
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
POLPACK
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
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:
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.
- New routine kpgPutOutline creates and stores an STC polygon describing the spatial extent of an NDF
- 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.
PAL
- Add location of APEX and NANTEN2 telescopes.
Recent paper on PAL: PAL: A positional astronomy library
Documentation
- Updated and improved SCUBA-2 reduction cookbook SC/21.
- Recent Starlink papers:
Starlink Software in 2013, ASP Conf. Ser. 485, 2014, 391
Advantages of Extensible Self-described Data Formats: Lessons Learned from NDF, ASP Conf. Ser. 485, 2014, 355
Individual entries now exist on the Astrophysics Source Code Library for each Starlink application (for example KAPPA: ascl:1403.022; CUPID: ascl:1311.007). Please consider citing these when mentioning individual applications.