SkyCat

SkyCat is a tool for image visualization and accessing astronomy archive catalogs.


Here are some key features of "SkyCat":

· Display FITS images, with support for the World Coordinate System (WCS), interactive measurement of offsets, and other standard visualization functions (SAOimage-like).
· Overlay and edit color graphic objects on the image, 'tagging' sources with text, arrows, circles, or other graphic elements.
· Display a compass indicating where north and east are in the image, based on the world coordinates information.
· PostScript color printing of the display (image + graphics).
· Access and load images from network image servers, such as the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS).
· Select previously viewed images from a history menu and catalog.
· The cut levels, color scale algorithm and colormap settings are remembered for each image.
· Access and load catalog information from a number of popular astronomical catalogs, such as the HST Guide Star Catalog and many others.
· Create, search and edit local user catalogs.
· Save catalog data locally.
· Overlay catalog sources on an image, taking object size and orientation into account.
· Interact with Netscape to display more object information when available.
· Access the observations catalog from the NTT, HST and CFHT Science Archives.
· Access to SIMBAD and NED both as name resolvers as well as for information on known objects.
· Retrieve preview and other compressed images and decompress them on the fly.
· Retrieve and plot tabular preview data for a selected object as an X/Y graph.
· Calculate, display and plot the center position, FWHM, angle and other information for a selected star/object.
· Load and save compressed images in hcompress, gzip or UNIX compress format.
· Access SkyCat features from a remote process via socket interface or Tk "send".
· Access image header and data (FITS format) via SysV shared memory or mmap.
· Interact with WWW browser to access catalog documentation and other documents.
· Support for dynamically loaded skycat plugins that add new features or modify existing ones.
· Load lists of catalogs from other sites (ESO, CADC, CDS, local) and and allow users to select a preferred default catalog list.

Requirements:

· Tcl/Tk 8.4

What's New in This Release:

· Replaced calls to free() with Tcl_Free() for Tcl lists accessed from C code, as well as other minor bugs that showed up under Debian GNU/Linux 3.1.