WCSTools 3.8.8 WCSTools is a set of software utilities, written in C, which create, display and manipulate the world coordinate system of a FITS or IRAF image, using specific keywords in the image header which relate pixel position within the image to position on the sky. Auxillary programs search star catalogs and manipulate images. To make the entire package, type make all in the main directory or, on Solaris machines make -f Makefile.solaris This is version 3.8.8 of the WCSTools package developed by Jessica Mink (jmink@cfa.harvard.edu) at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, with significant code or algorithms from Mark Calabretta of CSIRO (projection), Bill Cotton of NRAO (projection), Jesse Doggett and Rick White of StScI (DSS projection) Elwood Downey of the University of Iowa (WCS fitting procedure), John Roll of SAO (network access), Jing Li of IPAC (SIP distortion), Pat Wallace of Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK (coordinate conversion), Frank Valdes of NOAO (support for NOAO's ZPX projection), and Ed Los of HCO (support for Emmanuel Bertin's SCAMP distortion correction). Bill Joye and Eric Mandel of SAO, Allan Brighton of ESO, and Jean-Baptiste Marquette of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, and David Shupe of IPAC helped debug the subroutine library. Norman Grogin, Scott Kenyon, Susan Tokarz, Dan Koranyi, Guillermo Torres, Steve Willner, Gus Muensch, Ed Los and others of the CfA and Andreas Jaunsen helped debug the astrometry programs. Sergio Pascual of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid helped me get all of the variables initialized. The update history is in the NEWS file, but here is what is new: Version 3.8.8 (February 1, 2012) getdate: Add -s option to subtract (or add) days getfits: Print error, not blank file, if requested region is off image scat: Add -p option to Usage() simpos: Update URL for SIMBAD query Add -s NSV option to allow users to change search order Add -a option to print everything which is returned Fix -i option to print list of IDs returned Version 3.8.7 (October 31, 2012) Rename Man to man to avoid problems with Mac OSX file name convention filedir: If pathname ends in "/", drop last directory catutil.c: Skip trailing right bracket in aget*() dateutil.c: Unused l0 dropped from jd2lst(); ts2ss from jd2mst() imio.c: Fix errors with short and character images in minvec(), maxvec() wcs.c: Drop d1 and d2 from wcsdist(); diffi from wcsdist1() wcs.c: Drop depwcs; it's in main wcs structure wcsinit.c: Drop unused variable iszpx; fix bug in latmin assignment zpxpos.c: Fix code for quadratic near pole Documentation, with examples and installation directions, is on the World Wide Web at http://tdc-www.harvard.edu/software/wcstools/ References If the WCSTools package has proven useful in your work, please reference at least one of the following papers. If you want to find out which is most applicable, the full texts are available on the WCSTools web site at http://tdc-www.harvard.edu/software/wcstools/publications/ The paper presented at ADASS in 1996 is the best published description of the IMWCS world coordinate system fitting program: "WCSTools: Putting Image World Coordinate Systems to Use", Douglas J. Mink, 1997, in Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems VI, A.S.P. Conference Series, Vol. 125. Edited by Gareth Hunt and H. E. Payne. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, pp. 249-252. The 1998 ADASS paper is the best published description of the other tools in the WCSTools package, including SAOimage when used for WCS work: "WCSTools: An Image Astrometry Toolkit", Douglas J. Mink, 1999, in Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems VIII A.S.P. Conference Series, Vol. 172. Edited by Dave Mehringer, Ray Plante, and Doug Roberts. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, pp. 498-501. A paper presented at the 2001 ADASS conference describes how the WCSTools package uses the web, among other new features: "WCSTools 3.0: More Tools for Image Astrometry and Catalog Searching", Douglas J. Mink, in Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XI, A.S.P. Conference Series, Vol. 281, 2002. Edited by David Bohlender, Daniel Durand, and T.H. Handley. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, pp. 169-172. This paper presented at the 2002 ADASS conference describes interesting ways to use the SCAT program: "Federating Catalogs and Interfacing Them with Archives: A VO Prototype", Douglas J. Mink and Michael J. Kurtz, 2003, in Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XII, A.S.P. Conference Proceedings, Vol. 295. Edited by Harry Payne, Robert Jedrzejewski, and Richard Hook. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, pp. 51-54. To assist users in selecting the best catalog to use, we tested the accuracy of the various catalogs one is likely to use with imwcs, showing how well it works in a pipeline mode on 1728 images. This ADASS paper is an improved version of our AAS/DDA paper, adding the UCAC2 catalog and emphasizing usefulness more than astrometry: "A Comparison of Large All-Sky Catalogs", Douglas J. Mink, Warren R. Brown, and Michael J. Kurtz, 2004, in Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XIII, A.S.P. Conference Proceedings, Vol. 314. Edited by Francois Oschenbein, Mark Allen, and Daniel Egret. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, pp. 141-144. Program Descriptions addpix Add a constant value(s) to specified pixel(s) bincat Bin a catalog into a FITS image in flux or number conpix Operate on all of the pixels of an image cphead Copy keyword values between FITS or IRAF images delhead Delete specified keywords from FITS or IRAF image file headers delwcs Delete the WCS keywords from an image. If both EPOCH and EQUINOX are present, EQUINOX is also deleted. edhead Edit the header of a FITS file or the user parameters of an IRAF image file using a the text editor specified by the EDITOR environment variable. getcol Extract specified fields from an space-separated ASCII table file getdate Convert dates and times between various formats getfits Extract portion of a FITS file into a new FITS file, preserving WCS gethead Return values for keyword(s) specified after filename. getpix Return value(s) of specified pixel(s) gettab Extract values from tab table data base files i2f Read two-dimensional IRAF image file and write FITS image file imcat List catalog sources which should be found in the area of the sky covered by a specific image. Specific catalogs supported include the GSC II, the 2MASS Point Source Catalog, the HST Guide Star Catalog, the USNO-A2.0 Catalog, the Tycho-2 Catalog, the PPM Catalog, the IRAS Point Source Catalog, and the SAO Catalog. imextract Extract 1- or 2-dimensional images from 2- or 3-dimensional images imfill Replace bad pixels using a box median, mean, or Gaussian filter imhead Print FITS or IRAF header immatch Match catalog and image stars using the WCS in the image file. imresize Shrink an image by an integral factor keeping WCS intact imrot Rotate and/or reflect FITS or IRAF image files imsize Print center and size of image using WCS keywords in header imsmooth Run a box median, mean, or Gaussian filter over an image imstack Stack 1-dimensional images into a 2-dimensional image imstar Find and list the n brightest stars in an IRAF or FITS image, with their sky coordinates if there is WCS information in the image header. imwcs Automaticaly find stars in a FITS or IRAF image, match them to any of the supported catalogs, compute the relation between sky coordinates and image coordinates, and write it into the image header. keyhead Change keyword names in headers of FITS or IRAF images. nedname Return object name(s) from RA(s) and Dec(s) using NED (the NASA Extragalactic Database) nedpos Return RA and Dec for object name (or list of them) using NED newfits Create blank FITS image files (dataless by default, with BITPIX=0) remap Remap an image from one WCS into another, rebinning as necessary scat Search a source catalog given a region on the sky. Specific catalogs supported include the GSC II, the USNO-B1.0 Catalog, the 2MASS Point Source Catalog, the HST Guide Star Catalog, the USNO-A2.0 Catalog, the USNO UCAC2 Catalog, the Tycho-2 Catalog, the PPM Catalog, the IRAS Point Source Catalog, and the SAO Catalog. sethead Set header keyword values in FITS or IRAF images. setpix Set specified pixel(s) to specified value(s) simpos Return RA and Dec for object name (or list of them) using SIMBAD sky2xy Print image pixel coordinates for given sky coordinates on the command line or in a list file. skycoor Convert between J2000, B1950, and Galactic coordinates from the command line or a file. sumpix Total pixel values over an image row or column or a specified area wcshead Print basic world coordinate system information on one line per image xy2sky Print sky coordinates for given image pixel coordinates on the command line or in a list file. -Jessica Mink, SAO, 2013-02-01 http://tdc-www.harvard.edu/mink/