--- Latest version 2.4b released June 11, 2008 (FIRST data update August 12, 2008) ---
Today you can run SkyView on your own machine! You can get
SkyView's capabilities without going through SkyView's Web site
with the new SkyView-in-a-Jar tool.
Just download one file, the SkyView JAR (or Java 1.5 compatible), to get started.
The SkyView JAR is executable so that you can use it immediately, e.g., try
java -jar skyview.jar survey=dss position=3c273
after you download the file. This should generate a file output.fits with the an image
of 3C273 from the Digitized Sky Survey.
You will need a recent version of Java at least V1.6 or 6 depending upon
whether whether you are talking about the development environment or language. The 1.5 link can be
used if you have only Java 1.5/5 but may not have the latest features.
For Linux, Windows and SPARC platforms you can find the latest release through
the Sun Java web pages . A
MacOS/X version and installation instructions
are also available.
This application supports the functionality of the SkyView Web pages
for generating files. It includes essentially all the surveys available through the standard SkyView web interface.
You can generate FITS and graphic images.
The program lets you treat your own files as surveys and you can add other surveys linking
tp external data you might be interested in.
It is especially easy to add a survey when the data is available through
the Virtual Observatory Simple Image Access protocol.
Features include:
- >80 surveys
- Grid overlays, contours, smoothing
- Catalogs from HEASARC, VizieR, NED and other VO sources
- ImageJ data visualization capabilities
- Outputs in FITS and several graphic image formats including JPEG, GIF, BMP and TIFF.
- High order resamplers including Lanczos and Spline resampling which
retain more information when using well-sampled images.
- An efficient exact-area flux-conserving reampler.
- Several de-edging algorithms to match image backgrounds when mosaics
are made from images with disparate backgrounds.
- Several ways of choosing the source image to sample.
- Multi-order samplers (using a low order sampler near image defects)
- Smaller memory footprint which enables very large images to be generated.
- Ability for users to easily add in their own surveys.
- Easy linking to datasets described by the Virtual Obsevatory Simple Image Access
protocol
- Extensible design that allows users to plug in their
own samplers, projections, coordinate systems, mosaickers, ... to deal with any special
requirements they might have.
- Independent processing so that users do not share the limited resources
of the SkyView Web server. The program can run on many clients simultaneously.
- Java source files included in the JAR for users who wish to modify or extend
functionality.
New since V2.3:
- The ability to add overlapping observations to generate deeper images
- Support for .Z compressed images (in addition to .gz)
- New support for Stereographic, Sansom-Flamsteed/Sinusoidal and Arc projections.
- Support for finding exactly which input is sampled at a given point
- Support for TOAST WorldWideTelescope projection
- Ability to center fixed projections around any point in the sky
- Increased options for adding SIAP services
- Fixed handling of NaNs in image smoothing.
- Provide feedback on how many candidate images will be used.
- NEAT survey is once again available.
- More functionality to Clip sampler
A User's Guide is available in Word
and HTML.
The JavaDocs for the Java classes are also available.
Please contact Tom McGlynn or
Laura McDonald if you have questions
or comments about this package.
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