Starlink Software Collection — 2018A Release Notes

Highlights

The new HDS-V5 data format (which uses HDF5) is now available. In this release the default will be to write all files as HDS-V4, unless the environmental variable HDS_VERSION is set to 5. This is described in Jenness 2015 2015A&C....12..221 . We are planning to make this file format the default starting with our next release, so we would please request any issues or comments be sent on to us: either on the Starlink users' mailing list, the Starlink developers' mailing list, or sent directly to EAO with the helpdesk AT eaobservatory.org email address.
The ARY library has been converted to C.
Perl updated to Version 5.26.1.
Further improvements to POL-2 data reduction software, including (experimental) skyloop modes and (experimental) 450 micron reductions.
Expanded cookbook for heterodyne data reduction, including spectral analysis with SPLAT.

The FINDCLUMPS command now uses a better method for finding elliptical approximations for highly non-elliptical clumps. The previous method could produce extremely long thin ellipses for such clumps.

When reading a multiple-line ARD region to extract a spectrum, all newlines and spaces are removed so that it can be saved.
Key fonts with compound names can now be saved to the configuration of the contour toolbox.
HTTP request headers should now use the correct line termination.

A new estimator, "FastMed" has been added to COLLAPSE. It offers faster much faster calculation of unweighted medians.
WCSALIGN can now use a catalogue such as produced by POLPACK to define the reference grid (previously only an NDF could be used).
The weighting scheme used by ALIGN2D has been changed so that alignment is determined more by the brighter sections of the map than previously.
In WCSMOSAIC, each input NDF can now have a specified weight in the final mosaic.
SETAXIS has a new mode that reads the new axis values from the "Data" component of another NDF.

New command POLCONCAT to concatenate multiple vector catalogues.
New command POLSELECT allows vectors to be selected in various ways, including using an NDF as a mask.

The dome status has been added to scuba2_index / acsis_index.
POL2MAP: New parameter "binsize" allows he size of the bins in the final catalogue to be specified.
POL2MAP: New IP models at 450 um and 850 um.
POL2MAP: Improve pointing correction.
POL2MAP: Change default 450 um pixel size to 4 arc-sec.
POL2MAP: Allow SKYLOOP to be used to create maps rather than MAKEMAP.
POL2MAP: Allow observations to be weighted on the basis of how similar they are to the mean of the other observations.
POL2MAP: Allow minor changes in FCF to be detected and corrected when mosaicing observations.
POL2MAP: An error is now reported if the input data is not all for the same source.
SKYLOOP: Allow maps made from individual observations to be saved.
SKYLOOP: Allow data models to be stored in a specified directory rather than the current directory.

A bug relating to the receipt of spectra through local URLs via SAMP has been fixed.
The submillimetre line identifier catalog has been updated.

New function !astActiveObjects returns pointers for all currently active AST objects, filtered by class.
New function !astCreatedAt returns information about where an object was created.
The 1astChannel class now uses more precision when writing out floating point values, resulting in write-read round trips being lossless.
The FitsChan class has a new attribute "FitsTol" that specifies the maximum deviation from linearity allowed for the Mapping from pixel coordinates to intermediate world coordinates when writing out a FrameSet using FITS-WCS encoding.
!astSimplify will now merge a diagonal MatrixMap with an adjacent WinMap to create a modified WinMap.
The FitsChan class has a new attribute "SipReplace", which can be used to prevent the automatic replacement of inverse SIP coefficients when a FITS-WCS header including SIP distortion is read.
Improved simplification of CmpMaps including WcsMaps.
The FitsChan !astWrite method can now create FITS-WCS headers that include SIP distortion keywords, given a suitable FrameSet.
A few small memory leaks have been fixed.
The astRebinSeq function can now use a specified weight with each input data array.
Improvements to the accuracy of the iterative inverse used by the PolyMap class.
Several new string manipulation functions.

The maximum length of a group expression has been increased from 255 to 2047 characters.

A new package called "hds-v5" has been created that contains a complete re-write of the existing HDS API using HDF5. The original code that deals with "native" HDS files has been moved to a new package called "hds-v4". The "hds" package is now simply a layer that chooses whether to call the appropriate function from hds-v4 or hds-v5. When reading an existing "HDS" file it chooses the package corresponding to the format of the existing file (either v4 or v5). When creating a new "HDS" file, it chooses the format specified by the HDS_VERSION environment variable (which currently defaults to v4).

C wrappers have been added for more routines.
Limits on the length of the command line and on the length of individual file paths have been relaxed.

Updated to current upstream version 3.43. This includes a security fix that NASA/HEASARC recommended all CFITSIO users should install. See https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/FTP/software/fitsio/c/docs/changes2.txt

The shell "login" and "profile" scripts now add Starlink to the start (rather than the end) of LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
The shell "login" and "profile" scripts now define ORAC_PERLBIN.

SC/20 (Heterodyne Data Reduction) expanded to include an illustrated chapter on spectral analysis (e.g. identification of telluric lines, noise estimation, and line fitting) with SPLAT, and various small corrections to Chapters 3 and 5 to 8.
SC/21 (SCUBA-2 Data Reduction) was given a spring clean, that includes clarifications, and fixes to typo's and cross references.
SC/22 (POL-2 Data reduction) updated to match the current software. It has a new chapter on using TOPCAT with vector catalogues, and example maps created using OBSWEIGHT and SKYLOOP.

There is a known threading problem that prevents the Java application Treeview from working on HDS Version 5 (HDF5) files.