Starlink Software Collection — 2025A Release Notes
Highlights
- Perl updated to version 5.36.3.
Changes to Applications
ATOOLS (ascl:1708.001)
- Added ANGLE output parameter to ASTANGLE.
CUPID (ascl:1311.007)
(No changes in this release.)
FIGARO (ascl:1411.022)
(No changes in this release.)
GAIA (ascl:1403.024)
- Updated the MOC toolbox.
- Only attempt to draw parts of a MOC overlapping the current plot. (The intersection is currently performed at the resolution of the MOC, so it may introduce jagged edges where a low-resolution MOC continues beyond the plot area.)
- The color and width of the position of interest marker can now be changed, with the color being included in the startup options.
KAPPA (ascl:1403.022)
- Increased the maximum number of spectra in MLINPLOT.
- (Due to a change in AST mentioned below, the MINRES parameter of MOCGEN can now be less than MAXRES in order to capture the full coverage of a file when a MOC at a lower resolution is desired.)
ORAC-DR (ascl:1310.001)
POLPACK (ascl:1405.014)
(No changes in this release.)
SMURF (ascl:1310.007)
- Corrected logic for ignoring discrepancies in ENVIRO entries and also ignore discrepancies in WVM_ entries.
- Check all values when looking for a good ACS_EXPOSURE / ACS_OFFEXPOSURE.
SOURCEPLOT
- The included JCMT source catalog has been updated.
- Windows should now be resizable.
SPLAT (ascl:1402.007)
(No changes in this release.)
STILTS (ascl:1105.001)
- Updated to version 3.5-1.
TOPCAT (ascl:1101.010)
- Updated to version 4.10-2.
Changes to Libraries
AST (ascl:1404.016)
Improved handling of unreadable alternate axis descriptions within FITS-WCS headers in the FitsChan class. A new attribute called IgnoreBadAlt allows these to be ignored (by default, such headers would cause an error to be reported). A new warning called BadAlt has been added, and if active, a warning will be created if any alternate axes are ignored when reading a FITS-WCS header.
The Table, FitsTable and FitsChan classes now support 64-bit integer keyword columns/values.
The MinOrder attribute of the Moc class can be higher than MaxOrder to allow small features to be included in a lower-resolution MOC when using astAddPixelMask or astAddRegion with a non-MOC region. (It should no longer be set to a very large value to have MaxOrder used instead in these methods.)
When adding FITS data or string representation to a Moc object, cells of greater order than the MaxOrder attribute will be degraded to that resolution.
- Tracing the outline of a Moc region (via the surface mesh) has hopefully been made more reliable with the addition of backtracking.
Added a check for an acos parameter being out of range in internal line length calculation in SkyFrame.
Box simplification to Polygon in a SkyFrame checks handedness without using astGetBounded.
- Points traced on the outline of a Moc region should now be transformed to its current frame.
ARY
(No changes in this release.)
CVG
(No changes in this release.)
HDS
(No changes in this release.)
NDF
(No changes in this release.)
NDG
- Increased the maximum number of lines of NDFs listed in HISTORY.
PCS
- Removed usage of TIOCSTI (not available by default since Linux 6.2). This was previously used to try to avoid loosing any input typed before prompting for a parameter value.
PRM
(No changes in this release.)
STIL
- Updated to version 4.3-1.
CFITSIO
- Updated to version 4.5.0.
Changes to Cookbooks and Guides
- SC/20: minor edits.
- SC/22: minor edits.
Known issues
- There is a known threading problem that prevents the Java application Treeview from working on HDS version 5 (HDF5) files.