The initial release of IRAF V2.14 is now available from links in the Downloads area and on the IRAF archive at iraf.noao.edu. The release is for PC-IRAF systems only (Linux, Mac OSX (Intel or PPC) and Cygwin). Additional binaries and platforms will be added in subsequent releases. For the impatient, the README file is attached in the body of the story.

Update (2/19/08) Solaris x86 binaries have been added to the distribution.

Critical Update (1/14/08) A crticial bug has been discovered in an IMIO interface routine that affects ALL tasks linked against V2.14. This bug causes bogus pixel values to be returned leading to corrupted images and/or unexplained system crashes. All users are strongly encouraged to re-install the IB and NB binary distributions with patched versions from the download area ASAP. Reinstalling the source distribution is NOT required (but does include the IMEDIT change mentioned below). We apologize for the oversight, please post problems or questions as they arise, see the README file addendum for details.

Errata: (12/18/07)The IMEDIT task has new parameters that are missing from the v2.14 distribution file. See this thread for details.

A new set of tools for easily accessing Virtual Observatory data from the command-line (and thus scripting environments) is now available for testing. These tasks permit searching for VO resources and the query/access of image and catalog data from more that 15,000 sources. A key design point is the use of astronomer-friendly terms in specifying resources, general search capability (e.g. all X-ray image services), and a variety of output formats (default is CSV for easy manipulation by other tools).

The VO-CLI Project Home Page contains additional information, runnable examples, download instructions, as well as a guided tour of the software. These tools were developed as part of a larger VOClient project designed to provide a multi-language interface to VO data and services. They will be used in the upcoming IRAF NVO package but as host tools can be used from any environment. Examples of what you can do include: keyword searches to find relevant VO resources, process queries for lists of positions, easily find all HST data for a given object, or simply resolve and object name to its coordinates.

Since this is a testing release, feedback in the forums or comments is especially appreciated. Detailed examples of how to use the main data query/access task are shown in the main body of the story.

It's amazing what you find with Google these days.....
In The Know: White House Announces 'Everything Is Great In Iraf'

Discussions have been underway for a while within NOAO regarding how best to balance the needs of internal projects, the iraf.net activities, and new projects. The result is a mutual collaboration in which IRAF development is resuming within NOAO on a modest scale, and the community support and development activities here will be encouraged and supported to some extent for those NOAO employees supporting this site (i.e. some work on this site is now/again part of our day-job).

It has been a while since the last V2.13 release, the reason can now be made clear: The effort has been going into an official V2.14 release from NOAO. This will additionally include a number of new external packages and other software that will be demonstrated at ADASS next month, and will be released in the very near future.

The ASTCAT package provides tools to get catalogs from web sites that support HTTP/Get URLs which return a text table. It is challenge to discover these sites and keep the the ASTCAT database up-to-date. Two important catalogs are the 2MASS point source catalog and the USNO-B1 catalog.

NUMBER: 559
MODULE: longslit.transform
SYSTEM: -V2.12.3
DATE: Tue Aug 7 10:39:13 MST 2007
FROM: valdes

BUG: When using log resampling (xlog=yes or ylog=yes) it is possible to get a segmentation error. This is caused by taking the log and anti-log of coordinates and not getting back exactly the same value due to real precision problems. This process caused an attempt to go outside the valid range of the interpolator. This may be a rare problem but if it does happen one may be able to use the x1, x2, y1, y2 values to work around the problem. The workaround for a future release is to use double precision and to impose range limits on data passed to the interpolator.

STATUS: Fixed for the next release.

It's been on my list for a while now, but I finally got around to creating several new forums for the site: The Sources forum is to allow users to post small scripts or announcements of software that may be of interest to other users. A new Job Board category includes forums for users to post Open Positions that may be of interest to this group, or Resumes if you're looking for a position.

We may still want to create other means of handling these, but for now we'll see how much interest there is with this fairly simple scheme. If you have a script, know of a job opening, or have a suggestion for other groups, please post.

The Astronomy Tools and Applications Branch of the Space Telescope Science Institute wishes to announce the availability of version 3.7 of the Space Telescope Science Data Analysis Software (STSDAS). Concurrent with the STSDAS release, we have also released v3.7 of the TABLES external package.....

Changelog and download details in the body of the story. Comments should go to help@stsci.edu, especially those needing a Windows port.

NUMBER: 558
MODULE: mscimage
SYSTEM: all release up to date
DATE: Fri Mar 30 11:04:18 MST 2007
FROM: valdes

BUG: MSCIMAGE defines the resampled output world coordinate system (WCS) using a reference image WCS. If this reference image has a ZPN projection an error will occur. This is because when the output WCS is set the ZPN projection is inherited from the reference image but MSCIMAGE does correctly setup the output ZPN projection from the reference image. So one must use a reference image with another projection such as TAN.

.....see story for remainder of buglog

Hot-wiring the Transient Universe: A Joint VOEvent & HTN Workshop will be held in Tucson, AZ on June 4-7, 2007. Registration for this workshop is now open at the conference web site: http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/hotwired/. This workshop aims to bring together developers and users of the HTN (Heterogeneous Telescope Network) Consortium and the VOEvent (transient alter notification protocol) Working Group to discuss technology, data fusion, and design of systems for the detectiona nd rapid follow-up of celestial transient events. Anybody interested in time domain or transient follow-up astronomy is encouraged to participate, not just members of the current VOEvent working group or HTN consortium. The workshop will take a global perspective from the point of view of the astronomical observing system at all apertures and wavelengths with both robotic and human mediated, real and virtual, telescopes and instruments.

Details and links (and a rather unique astronomy conference poster) available on the workshop website.