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SkyView in a Jar

--- Version 2.3 released May 31, 2007 ---
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, 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 V1.5 or 5 depending upon whether whether you are talking about the development environment or language) or higher which is available for all major platforms. 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:

  • >70 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.

Most changes to version 2.3 were made in support of the SkyView Web but there have been some significant changes from V2.1.

  • Very Low-frequency Sky Survey (VLSS).
  • Batch processing capability.
  • Better handling of log and sqrt scaling.
  • Fixed bugs in handling of 3-D surveys.
  • Enhanced survey documentation tools.
  • SIA server capabilities
  • Better handling of Car/Ait tiled images near poles.

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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