A beta-release of the Mac/Intel port is now available for user testing. Features are still planned and the final packaging has yet to be done, but this is a fully functional release of IRAF, X11IRAF, various external packages and DS9, all with native Intel binaries.

Please report any problems, bugs, or suggestions to the forum thread started on this topic. The beta may be updated occassionally if serious bugs are found or major new features added, and all users should update to the final release once it is ready. Detailed, if quick, release notes are in the body of the message. For the impatient, here is a link to the distribution directory.

Update: (3/14/06) PPC binaries and common x86/ppc source updated in distribution.
Update: (3/29/06) STSDAS/TABLES V3.5 x86 binaries added to distribution.
Update: (4/03/06) RedHat binaries of port added to distribution (see comments).

NUMBER: 552
MODULE: imcombine
SYSTEM: V2.12.2
DATE: Tue Feb 28 14:07:30 MST 2006
FROM: valdes

BUG: When the combine option is sum and weighting is selected an exception occurs. The sum option was added as a later feature and a flag needed for weighting was not set. There is no workaround to combine weighting and summing directly. One can use "average" and the scale the result to the equivalent of a sum.

STATUS: Fixed for V2.12.3.

A new task allows taking a list of RA, Dec, and data, such as image names, that one wants to group into sublists. The grouping is based on a minimum separation in RA and Dec. The SKYGROUP help page is available from this site already, the code itself is in the body of the message and in the upcoming release in the NPROTO package.

The calculation of the separation between two celestial points is a standard astronomical utility. In SPP routines may be found in the math$slalib package. At the CL level there is astcalc and asthedit. However those are fairly complex and in scripts one would like to have a simple interface. People can write their own script code but I thought it would be useful to provide one. The SKYSEP help page is already available from this site, the script is in the body of the story and will be available in the upcoming release in the NPROTO package.

Mark Taylor has announced the release of TOPCAT V2.0. A full description of the many graphics upgrades is included in the announcement below, or the project web page. TOPCAT is a tabular data viewer and editor and one of the only projects to survive the Starlink shutdown. I'm a big fan and recommend it for your FITS bintables every bit as much as VOTable xml.

Machine	Bench Time
Dual 2.7Ghz G5, 2GB	31 sec (ppc bins)
17" Intel/iMac, 1GB	52 sec (ppc bins)
	21 sec (intel bins)

I got my hands on an Intel iMac recently and did some quick looking around and testing. The surprising news is that for the most part the existing PPC macosx binaries will run without change using the emulator! A statically linked DS9 also works, as do the X11IRAF tasks.

Update: (2/7/06) Initial port work is complete and native binaries are working. As a benchmark comparison using a script that does some real-world reductions consider the table here (YMMV): See below for other notes and updates as we get a chance to do more on this (borrowed) machine.....

CDS has announced the release of Aladin V3.5, details are available from here. This version features several new VO enhancements, see below for information from their announcement:

So I was sitting around trying to avoid real work and came across a "code visualization" project on the net. Seeing an opportunity to waste some time, I applied it to IRAF just to see what would happen. The result is interesting enough to post here, and might make for an interesting CD jacket one day. Various resolutions are available, anyone adventurous enough to work on this some more (i.e. add labels or apply some graphics design) please post your results or comments . Click on the image to see more.

The WIYN Mini-Mosaic WCS was incorrectly recorded with a 180 degree rotation for a couple of years. It has been fixed recently but for older data this can be easily fixed using MSCWCS in the MSCRED package.

Who thought you could do so much with CL scripts? WCSFixer is a new NVO application developed entirely in CL scripts but with a rich web interface. With the flip of a parameter these same scripts can be used in the CL on your desktop. This and other new services are being demonstrated this week at the NVO booth at the AAS (or see the NVO homepage.