Debian Science Astronomy packages

AstrOmatic software is meant to be run in batch mode on large quantities of data, mostly on Unix platforms, with minimum human intervention. It is currently in use in various image survey pipelines including TERAPIX, the Dark-Energy Survey Data Management system, and Astro-WISE.

This metapackage will install all software from AstrOmatic.net that is packaged for Debian.

The astrometry engine will take any image and return the astrometry world coordinate system (WCS), a standards-based description of the transformation between image coordinates and sky coordinates.

The aa program computes the orbital positions of planetary bodies and performs rigorous coordinate reductions to apparent geocentric and topocentric place (local altitude and azimuth). It also reduces star catalogue positions given in either the FK4 or FK5 system. Data for the 57 navigational stars is included. Most of the algorithms employed are from The Astronomical Almanac (AA) published by the U.S. Government Printing Office.

The aa program follows the rigorous algorithms for reduction of celestial coordinates exactly as laid out in current editions of the Astronomical Almanac. The reduction to apparent geocentric place has been checked by a special version of the program (aa200) that takes planetary positions directly from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory DE200 numerical integration of the solar system. The results agree exactly with the Astronomical Almanac tables from 1987 onward (earlier Almanacs used slightly different reduction methods).

Certain computations, such as the correction for nutation, are not given explicitly in the AA but are referenced there. In these cases the program performs the full computations that are used to construct the Almanac tables (references are provided).

The astropy package contains core functionality and some common tools needed for performing astronomy and astrophysics research with Python.

This package contains the tools that come with astropy:

• fitscheck: Detect and fix FITS standards violations
• fits2bitmap: Create a bitmap file from a FITS image.
• fitsdiff: Compare two FITS image files and report the differences in header keywords and data.
• fitsheader: Print the header(s) of one or more FITS file(s) to the standard output in a human-readable format.
• samp_hub: SAMP Hub Server.
• volint: Check a VOTable file for compliance to the VOTable specification
• wcslint: Check the WCS keywords in a FITS file for compliance against the standards

The goal of Milkyway@Home is to use the BOINC platform to harness volunteered computing resources in creating a highly accurate three dimensional model of the Milky Way galaxy using data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This project enables research in both astroinformatics and computer science.

In computer science, the project is investigating different optimization methods which are resilient to the fault-prone, heterogeneous and asynchronous nature of Internet computing; such as evolutionary and genetic algorithms, as well as asynchronous newton methods. While in astroinformatics, Milkyway@Home is generating highly accurate three dimensional models of the Sagittarius stream, which provides knowledge about how the Milky Way galaxy was formed and how tidal tails are created when galaxies merge.

This package contains the Milkyway@home application for the BOINC distributed computing platform. Note that this package has been primarily created for users of architectures for which Milkyway@home does not provide its application. If your architecture is x86 or AMD64 the BOINC client automatically downloads the latest Milkyway@home application if you participate in this project. There is no need to install this package then.

SETI@home is a distributed computing project using Internet-connected computers for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). It searches for possible evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence in radio transmissions collected by the Arecibo radio telescope.

This package contains the SETI@home Enhanced application for the BOINC distributed computing platform. The BOINC client downloads the radio data which the SETI@home application analyzes looking for signals of extraterrestrial origin. Results are then send back to the SETI@home server by the BOINC client.

Note that this package has been primarily created for users of architectures for which SETI@home does not provide its application. If your architecture is x86 or AMD64 the BOINC client automatically downloads the latest SETI@home application if you participate in this project. There is no need to install this package then, except for it to take all technical hurdles from you to have your very custom SETI patch or new compiler flags evaluated. The configuration of BOINC to find the local SETI binary is all performed by the package.

This package only provides command line application. The boinc-app-seti-graphics package provides graphic application.

The casacore package contains the core libraries of the old AIPS++/CASA (Common Astronomy Software Applications) package. This split was made to get a better separation of core libraries and applications.

This package contains the tools built with CASA core:

• taql - query language for casacore tables
• measuresdata - create data tables for measures
• imageregrid, imagecalc, showtable, showtablelock, findmeastable, fits2table, imreorder, casahdf5support, msselect, image2fits, imageslice, etc.

Celestia is a free 3D astronomy program. Based on the Hipparcos Catalogue, it allows users to display objects ranging in scale from artificial satellites to entire galaxies in three dimensions using OpenGL. Unlike most planetarium software, the user is free to travel about the Universe.

This is a dummy package that selects at least one frontend for Celestia.

The ESO-MIDAS system provides general tools for image processing and data reduction with emphasis on astronomical applications including imaging and special reduction packages for ESO instrumentation at La Silla and the VLT at Paranal. In addition it contains applications packages for stellar and surface photometry, image sharpening and decomposition, statistics and various others.

EsoRex is the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Recipe Execution Tool. It can list, configure and execute CPL-based recipes from the command line.

The Common Pipeline Library (CPL) comprises a set of ISO-C libraries that provide a comprehensive, efficient and robust software toolkit. It forms a basis for the creation of automated astronomical data-reduction tasks.

One of the features provided by the CPL is the ability to create data-reduction algorithms that run as plugins (dynamic libraries). These are called "recipes" and are one of the main aspects of the CPL data-reduction development environment.

fitscut is designed to extract cutouts from FITS image format files. FITS, PNG, and JPEG output types are supported. When multiple input files are specified and the output type is PNG or JPEG the resulting image is an RGB color image.

Fitsverify is a computer program that rigorously checks whether a FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) data file conforms to all the requirements defined in Version 3.0 of the FITS Standard document.

Fv provides a graphical user interface to data stored in FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) files. Local files can be created, viewed and edited, files on the internet can be opened read-only through the http and ftp protocols. Through the POWplot program, FITS data can be visualized in a large variety of styles. An interface to the SkyView online database allows for searching, downloading, and plotting of images and object lists for a region of the sky.

Funtools, is a "minimal buy-in" FITS library and utility package developed at the High Energy Astrophysics Division of SAO. The Funtools library provides simplified access to a wide array of file types: standard astronomical FITS images and binary tables, raw arrays and binary event lists, and even tables of ASCII column data. A sophisticated region filtering library (compatible with ds9) filters images and tables using boolean operations between geometric shapes, support world coordinates, etc. Funtools also supports advanced capabilities such as optimized data searching using index files.

This package contains the tools.

Gcx is an astronomical image processing and data reduction tool, with an easy to use graphical user interface. It provides a complete set of data reduction functions for CCD photometry, with frame WCS fitting, automatic star identification, aperture photometry of target and standard stars, single-frame ensemble photometry solution finding, multi-frame color coefficient fitting, extinction coefficient fitting, and all-sky photometry; as well as general-purpose astronomical image processing functions (bias, dark, flat, frame alignment and stacking); It can function as a FITS viewer.

The program can control CCD cameras and telescopes, and implement automatic observation scripting. Cameras are controlled through a hardware-specific server, to which gcx connects through a TCP socket. It generates FITS files with comprehensive header information.

The IDL Astronomy Users Library is a central repository for low-level astronomy software written in the GNU Data Language (GDL). The library is not meant to be an integrated package, but rather is a collection of procedures from which users can pick and choose (and possibly modify) for their own use. Submitted procedures are given a cursory testing, but are basically stored in the library as submitted.

The library was originally written for the commercial IDL interpreter, but large parts are usable with the GDL interpreter as well. Other names for the libraries are "astron" and "idlastro".

The Coyote Library evolved from work David Fanning was doing teaching IDL courses and answering IDL questions on the IDL newsgroup. It is meant to be a well-documented library that demonstrates how to write solid IDL/GDL programs that are easy to maintain and extend.

The main content of the library is the Coyote Graphics System (CGS), a collection of Coyote Library programs that turn the traditional GDL/IDL graphics commands (e.g., Plot, Contour, Surface, TV, etc.) into modern programs.

The most important features of Coyote Graphics System are:

• The commands work identically on the display, in PostScript, and in the Z-graphics buffer.
• The commands can be displayed automatically in resizable graphics windows.
• The commands automatically create high quality PostScript, PDF, and raster file output.
• CGS graphics visualizations can be saved and restore later, or e-mailed to colleagues.
• The commands work identically in an indexed or decomposed color environment.
• The commands can use colors by name (e.g., "red", "dodger blue").
• CGS commands are faster (often much faster) than the equivalent IDL function graphics commands.
• Greek letters and other symbols can be directly embedded in Coyote Graphics text.
• The commands fix the most annoying quirks (e.g., contour holes and levels) in traditional IDL commands.

These GDL routines provide a robust and relatively fast way to perform least-squares curve and surface fitting. The algorithms are translated from MINPACK-1, which is a rugged minimization routine found on Netlib, and distributed with permission. This algorithm is more desirable than CURVEFIT because it is generally more stable and less likely to crash than the brute-force approach taken by CURVEFIT, which is based upon Numerical Recipes.

MPFIT has additional capabilities not found in CURVEFIT. Model parameters can be "frozen" (that is, held constant during the fitting process). Simple boundary constraints can be imposed on parameter values, which can be helpful to keep parameters from becoming negative, for example. Please see the documentation for the PARINFO keyword if you wish to use this facility.

GNU Data Language (GDL) is a free IDL (Interactive Data Language) compatible incremental compiler. It has full syntax compatibility with IDL 7.1. IDL is a registered trademark of ITT Visual Information Solutions. From IDL 8.0, the following language elements are supported:

• FOREACH loop
• negative array indices
• garbage collection pointers and objects
• call methods on an object using "." (e. g. object.aMemberProcedure,arg1)

The file input output system is fully implemented. GUI support (widgets) is officially provided, but it's not complete yet.

This package contains the main commandline and interpreter frontend.

Gpredict is a real time satellite tracking and orbit prediction program for the Linux desktop. It uses the SGP4/SDP4 propagation algorithms together with NORAD two-line element sets (TLE).

Some core features of Gpredict include:

• Tracking of a large number of satellites only limited by the physical memory and processing power of the computer
• Display the tracking data in lists, maps, polar plots and any combination of these
• Have many modules open at the same either in a notebook or in their own windows. The modules can also run in full-screen mode
• You can use many ground stations
• Predict upcoming passes
• Gpredict can run in real-time, simulated real-time (fast forward and backward), and manual time control
• Detailed information both the real time and non-real time modes
• Doppler tuning of radios via Hamlib rigctld
• Antenna rotator control via Hamlib rotctld

Gyoto is a framework for computing geodesics in curved space-times. The gyoto utility program uses this framework to compute images of astronomical objects in the vicinity of compact objects (e.g. black-holes). Such images are distorted by strong gravitational lensing. The gyoto program takes a scenery description in XML format, computes this scenery using relativistic ray-tracing, and saves the result in FITS format.

This metapackage depends on all the Gyoto interfaces (command-line, Yorick, Python 2 and 3).

MPI parallelization requires the mpi-default-bin package. The Gyoto documentation is provided in the gyoto-doc package.

INDI (Instrument-Neutral Device Interface) is a distributed XML-based control protocol designed to operate astronomical instrumentation. INDI is small, flexible, easy to parse, scalable, and stateless. It supports common DCS functions such as remote control, data acquisition, monitoring, and a lot more.

This package contains the INDI server, the drivers for the supported astronomical instrumentation, and other INDI tools.

IRAF is the "Image Reduction and Analysis Facility". The main IRAF distribution includes a good selection of programs for general image processing and graphics.

Other external or layered packages are available for applications such as data acquisition or handling data from other observatories and wavelength regimes such as the Hubble Space Telescope (optical), EUVE (extreme ultra-violet), or ROSAT and AXAF (X-ray). These external packages are distributed separately from the main IRAF distribution but can be easily installed. The IRAF system also the programmable Command Language scripting facility.

KStars is a scientifically accurate desktop planetarium, visualising a graphical simulation of the night sky from any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes 130,000 stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects, all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets and asteroids. KStars addresses students and amateur astronomers of all levels.

The database of known objects can be extended and updated from local or remote databases, which is prepared for in a user-extendable interface. KStars suggests observations of particular interest like conjunctions with respect to the location of the user. And for user-selected targets it proposes the ones that are best-observable.

The software may be used for planning experiments around the globe, e.g. for remote controlled commercial services. But KStars also features an INDI interface to control local telescopes and cameras. Users with programming experience can script it via the KDE desktop bus.

This package is part of the KDE education module.

Light Speed! is an OpenGL-based program which illustrates the effects of special relativity on the appearance of moving objects. When an object accelerates past a few million meters per second, these effects begin to grow noticeable, becoming more and more pronounced as the speed of light is approached. These relativistic effects are viewpoint-dependent, and include shifts in length, object hue, brightness and shape.

The moving object is, by default, a geometric lattice. 3D Studio and LightWave 3D objects may be imported as well. Best of all, the simulator is completely interactive, rendering the exotic distortions in real-time!

Lynkeos is an application dedicated to the processing of astronomical (mainly planetary) images taken with a webcam through a telescope. By stacking the best images, the signal to noise ratio is increased and details lost in the noise of individual images become visible in the resulting image.

MissFITS is a program that performs basic maintenance and packaging tasks on FITS files using an optimised FITS library. MissFITS can:

• add/edit/remove FITS header keywords
• split/join Multi-Extension-FITS (MEF) files
• unpile/pile FITS data-cubes
• create/check/update FITS checksums, using R. Seaman’s protocol.

Montage is a toolkit for assembling astronomical images into custom mosaics.

It uses algorithms that preserve the calibration and positional (astrometric) fidelity of the input images to deliver mosaics that meet user-specified parameters of projection, coordinates, and spatial scale. It supports all projections and coordinate systems in use in astronomy.

It contains independent modules for analyzing the geometry of images on the sky, and for creating and managing mosaics; these modules are powerful tools in their own right and have applicability outside mosaic production, in areas such as data validation.

OpenUniverse (OU for short) is a fun, fast and free OpenGL space simulator. It currently focuses on the Solar System and lets you visit all of its planets, most major moons and a vast collection of smaller bodies in colorful, glorious and realtime 3D. If you've ever had a chance to visit Mercury or asteroid Geographos, here you'll find them looking exactly the same way, following exactly the same path as when you've left them.

Notice that OpenUniverse is not actively being maintained anymore and that users are recommended to use Celestia instead.

This is a satellite tracking program. It is probably mostly of interest to users of amateur satellites, but includes support for optionally announcing azimuth and elevation to help in manual antenna pointing, or optical observation of satellites.

The upstream predict sources include a front-end called 'map', which is called predict-map in the Debian package.

The 'ntp' package is suggested because accurate satellite tracking depends on precise knowledge of ground station time and location.

Extract models of the Point Spread Function (PSF) from FITS images processed with SExtractor, and measures the quality of images. The generated PSF models can be used for model-fitting photometry or morphological analyses.

astLib is a set of Python modules that provides some tools for research astronomers. It can be used for astronomical plots, some statistics, common calculations, coordinate conversions, and manipulating FITS images with World Coordinate System (WCS) information through PyWCSTools - a simple wrapping of WCSTools by Jessica Mink. PyWCSTools is distributed (and developed) as part of astLib.

The astropy package contains core functionality and some common tools needed for performing astronomy and astrophysics research with Python. It can be extended by a number of "affiliated packages" that are intended to work with the core package.

Astroquery is a set of Python tools for querying astronomical web forms and databases.

This is the Python 2 version of the package.

This module can list, configure and execute CPL-based recipes from Python3. The input, calibration and output data can be specified as FITS files or as pyfits objects in memory.

The Common Pipeline Library (CPL) comprises a set of ISO-C libraries that provide a comprehensive, efficient and robust software toolkit. It forms a basis for the creation of automated astronomical data-reduction tasks.

One of the features provided by the CPL is the ability to create data-reduction algorithms that run as plugins (dynamic libraries). These are called "recipes" and are one of the main aspects of the CPL data-reduction development environment.

The XPA messaging system provides seamless communication between many kinds of Unix programs, including Tcl/Tk programs such as ds9. The pyds9 module uses a Python interface to XPA to communicate with ds9. It supports communication with all of ds9’s XPA access points.

This package provides the Python-2 version of the package.

FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) is a data format most used in astronomy. PyFITS is a Python module for reading, writing, and manipulating FITS files. The module uses Python's object-oriented features to provide quick, easy, and efficient access to FITS files. The use of Python's array syntax enables immediate access to any FITS extension, header cards, or data items.

Note that the development of PyFITS has been stopped and will not see any new upstream version. It is superseded by the module astropy.io which is almost a drop-in replacement. PyFITS should therefore only be used for compatibility reasons, astropy should be used instead for new developments.

This package provides PyFITS on the Python 2 module path. It is complemented by python3-pyfits.

This is a thin wrapper around the high- and mid-level interfaces of Dr. Mark Calabretta's WCSLIB for handling the World Coordinate System.

In addition, there are extensions (written in C) to support Spitzer Simple Imaging Polynomial (SIP) convention keywords and Paper IV table lookup distortion.

The spectral-cube package provides an easy way to read, manipulate, analyze, and write data cubes with two positional dimensions and one spectral dimension, optionally with Stokes parameters. It aims to be a versatile data container for building custom analysis routines.

This package contains the Python 2 version of the package.

astLib is a set of Python3 modules that provides some tools for research astronomers. It can be used for astronomical plots, some statistics, common calculations, coordinate conversions, and manipulating FITS images with World Coordinate System (WCS) information through PyWCSTools - a simple wrapping of WCSTools by Jessica Mink. PyWCSTools is distributed (and developed) as part of astLib.

The astropy package contains core functionality and some common tools needed for performing astronomy and astrophysics research with Python3. It can be extended by a number of "affiliated packages" that are intended to work with the core package.

Astroquery is a set of Python tools for querying astronomical web forms and databases.

This is the Python 3 version of the package.

FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) is a data format most used in astronomy. PyFITS is a Python module for reading, writing, and manipulating FITS files. The module uses Python's object-oriented features to provide quick, easy, and efficient access to FITS files. The use of Python's array syntax enables immediate access to any FITS extension, header cards, or data items.

Note that the development of PyFITS has been stopped and will not see any new upstream version. It is superseded by the module astropy.io which is almost a drop-in replacement. PyFITS should therefore only be used for compatibility reasons, astropy should be used instead for new developments.

This package provides PyFITS on the Python 3 module path. It is complemented by python-pyfits.

The spectral-cube package provides an easy way to read, manipulate, analyze, and write data cubes with two positional dimensions and one spectral dimension, optionally with Stokes parameters. It aims to be a versatile data container for building custom analysis routines.

This package contains the Python 3 version of the package.

qfits is a stand-alone library written in C to interact with files complying with the FITS format, which is a data format most used in astronomy.

This package includes tools for simple manipulations of FITS files.

Rawtran is an utility to convert of raw photos in .CR2, .CRW, MRW, NEF, RAF, etc. formats to the general astronomical FITS image format. The identification of raw photo type and decoding itself is done via DCRAW utility by D.Coffin.

SAOImage DS9 is an astronomical imaging and data visualization application. DS9 supports FITS images and binary tables, multiple frame buffers, region manipulation, and many scale algorithms and colormaps. It provides for easy communication with external analysis tasks and is highly configurable and extensible via XPA and SAMP.

All versions and platforms support a consistent set of GUI and functional capabilities.

DS9 supports advanced features such as 2-D, 3-D and RGB frame buffers, mosaic images, tiling, blinking, geometric markers, colormap manipulation, scaling, arbitrary zoom, cropping, rotation, pan, and a variety of coordinate systems.

The GUI for DS9 is user configurable. GUI elements such as the coordinate display, panner, magnifier, horizontal and vertical graphs, button bar, and color bar can be configured via menus or the command line.

SaVi allows you to simulate satellite orbits and coverage, in two and three dimensions. SaVi is particularly useful for simulating satellite constellations such as Iridium and Globalstar.

SaVi can use Geomview, an optional but useful package, for 3D rendering.

SCAMP reads SExtractor catalogs and computes astrometric and photometric solutions for any arbitrary sequence of FITS images in a completely automatic way.

Seesat5 uses the NORAD sgp4 algorithm to compute the location of a satellite. Many different filtering methods are provided by Seesat5 so that only those satellites that might actually be viewed are presented in the report. This report includes bearing and elevation with respect to the observer's location as well as other information of interest to the observer.

Although an observer would find no use for it, the program can be made to report the location even when it is below the horizon. For radio satellites like the Oscar series knowing when it comes above the horizon is some of the interesting information this program can provide.

Find sources, such as stars and galaxies, in astronomical images. The input data files are in FITS file format, and are analyzed to compute the locations of sources, with the ability to distinguish between galaxies and stars using a neural-network technique.

Siril is an image processing tool specially tailored for noise reduction and improving the signal/noise ratio of an image from multiple captures, as required in astronomy. Siril can align automatically or manually, stack and enhance pictures from various file formats, even images sequences (movies and SER files).

The ESO/Starlink Skycat tool combines the image display capabilities of the RTD (Real-Time Display) with a set of classes for accessing astronomical catalogs locally and over the network using HTTP. The tool allows you to view FITS images from files or from the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS).

This (formerly SUPERSPHPLOT) is a visualisation tool for output from (astrophysical) simulations using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method in one, two and three dimensions. It is written in Fortran 90 and can utilise the PGPLOT graphics subroutine library to do the actual plotting. It is based around a command-line menu structure but utilises the interactive capabilities of PGPLOT to manipulate data interactively in the plotting window.

This package allows the installation and removal of astronomy catalogues, converting those catalogues to astronomy programs' data formats.

All stardata catalogues conforming to stardata-common policy are converted automatically at installation time to the formats of astronomy programs that support stardata-common.

The register-stardata program is transparent for the user; this program is called automatically when any astronomy package conforming to the stardata-common policy is installed, upgraded or removed.

StarPlot is a GTK+ based program that can be used interactively to view three-dimensional perspective charts of stars. Charts can be re-centered, rotated, or zoomed in or out with a mouse click (this can also, of course, be done via dialog boxes for more precision). Stars may be viewed (or ignored) by spectral class and absolute magnitude.

StarPlot is packaged with starconvert, a utility that converts line-oriented stellar data records to StarPlot format. Most star data files available on the Internet can be converted this way if a short file describing the original file format is provided to starconvert.

Stellarium renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real-time. With Stellarium, you really see what you can see with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope.

Some features:

• default star catalogue with over 600 thousand stars,
• information about the brightest stars (spectral type, distance, etc.),
• downloadable star catalogue extensions, for up to 210 million stars,
• all New General Catalogue (NGC) objects,
• images of almost all Messier objects and the Milky Way,
• real time positions of the planets and their satellites,
• 13 different cultures with their constellations,
• artistic illustrations of the 88 Western constellations,
• very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset,
• 7 panoramic landscapes (more can be made or downloaded from the website),
• scripting with ECMAScript,
• plug-in support: Stellarium comes with 8 plug-ins by default, including:
• artificial satellites plug-in (updated from an on-line TLE database),
• ocular simulation plug-in (shows how objects look like in a given ocular),
• Solar System editor plug-in (imports comet and asteroid data from the MPC),
• telescope control plug-in (Meade LX200 and Celestron NexStar compatible).

Stellarium should not be used for very high accurate calculation or ephemerids like eclipse predictions. However, it is the ideal program to prepare an observation evening with naked eye, binocular, or small telescope.

STIFF is a program that converts scientific FITS images to the TIFF format for illustration purposes. The main features of STIFF are:

• Accurate reproduction of the original surface brightnesses and colours
• Automatic or manual contrast and brightness adjustments
• Automatic sky background intensity and colour balance
• Adjustable colour saturation
• Colour-friendly gamma correction capabilities
• One or three input channels: gray-scale or true colour output
• Output with 8 or 16 bits per component
• Pixel rebinning and x/y flip options
• Support for arbitrarily large input and output images on standard hardware (BigTIFF support)
• Support for tiled, multiresolution pyramids
• Support for lossless and lossy compression methods
• Multi-threaded code with load-balancing to take advantage of multiple cores and processors.
• XML VOTable-compliant output of meta-data.

Resample and co-add together FITS images using any arbitrary astrometric projection defined in the WCS standard. The main features of SWarp are:

• FITS format (including multi-extensions) in input and output,
• Full handling of weight-maps in input and output,
• Ability to work with very large images (up to 500 Mpixels on 32-bit machines and 10^6 Tpixels with 64-bits), thanks to customized virtual-memory-mapping and buffering,
• Works with arrays in up to 9 dimensions (including or not two spherical coordinates),
• Selectable high-order interpolation method (up to 8-tap filters) in any dimension,
• Compatible with WCS and TNX (IRAF) astrometric descriptions,
• Support for equatorial, galactic and equatorial coordinate systems,
• Astrometric and photometric parameters are read from FITS headers or external ASCIIfiles,
• Built-in background subtraction,
• Built-in noise-level measurement for automatic weighting,
• Automatic centering and sizing functions of the output field,
• Multi-threaded code with load-balancing to take advantageof multiple processors.
• XML VOTable-compliant output of meta-data.

WCSLIB is a C library, supplied with a full set of Fortran wrappers, that implements the "World Coordinate System" (WCS) standard in FITS (Flexible Image Transport System).

This package contains the utility programs fitshdr, wcsware, HPXcvt, and wcsgrid that are included in wcslib.

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. Auxiliary programs search star catalogs and manipulate images.

This package contains the binary tools.

WeightWatcher is a program that combines weight-maps, flag-maps and polygon data in order to produce control maps which can directly be used in astronomical image-processing packages like Drizzle, Swarp or SExtractor.

Weight-thresholding and/or specific flag selections are applied by WeightWatcher through a configuration file: this alleviates other programs from such interpretation work. WeightWatcher will mostly be useful as part of an imaging survey pipeline. Its main features are:

• Processing speed: limited by the I/O performances of the machine (typically 50 Mpixel/s on a workstation),
• Ability to work with very large images (up to, say, 10^8 × 10^9 pixels on a 64 bit system),
• FITS format (including Multi-Extension) is used for input and output. Output flag-map format selection is automatic (8, 16 or 32bits),
• Up to 30 weight-maps, 30 flag-maps, and thousands of polygons can be handled simultaneously.
• Automatic rasterizing of DS9 .reg files,
• Statistics of flagged and weighted areas,
• Metadata output in XML-VOTable format.

wxAstroCapture controls cameras for planetary/lunar/solar and deep sky imaging. Long exposures are supported for SC modified webcams with serial and parallel port long exposure control. Also supported are Artemis/ATK cameras for 16bit deep sky imaging and webcam autoguiding using normal or long exposures.

Orbit Reconstruction, Simulation and Analysis (ORSA) is a framework for Celestial Mechanics investigations. The main goals of the project are the implementation of state of the art orbit integration algorithms, with concerns on accuracy and performance, and the development of a number of analysis tools.

This package contains xorsa, the main graphical application provided by the ORSA project. It is an interactive tool for scientific grade Celestial Mechanics computations. Asteroids, comets, artificial satellites, Solar, and extra-Solar planetary systems can be accurately reproduced, simulated and analyzed.

The XPA messaging system provides seamless communication between many kinds of Unix programs, including X programs and Tcl/Tk programs. It also provides an easy way for users to communicate with these XPA-enabled programs by executing XPA client commands in the shell or by utilizing such commands in scripts. Because XPA works both at the programming level and the shell level, it is a powerful tool for unifying any analysis environment: users and programmers have great flexibility in choosing the best level or levels at which to access XPA services, and client access can be extended or modified easily at any time.

This package contains the additional tools.

Xplanet renders an image of a planet into an X window or a file. All of the major planets and most satellites can be drawn, and different map projections are also supported, including azimuthal, hemisphere, Lambert, Mercator, Mollweide, Peters, polyconic, and rectangular.

In order to run xplanet, you'll need at least one map file. Some maps are included in the xplanet-images package.

Xplanet renders an image of a planet into an X window or a file.

In order to run xplanet, you'll need at least one map file. This package includes some map files that can be used with xplanet.

Yorick is an interpreted programming language for:

• scientific simulations or calculations
• postprocessing or steering large simulation codes
• interactive scientific graphics
• reading, writing, and translating large files of numbers

The yorick-full metapackage installs Yorick together with the full set of add-ons packaged for Debian.

You may prefer to only install the yorick package and cherry-pick the yorick-* add-ons you need.

If you need MPY, the MPI parallel version of Yorick, please install either yorick-mpy-openmpi or yorick-mpy-mpich2 in addition.

This is the data reduction pipeline for the AMBER instrument of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

AMBER is a near-infrared, multi-beam interferometric instrument, combining simultaneously up to 3 telescopes. AMBER can be used in Period 82 and following with UTs or ATs. All possible triplets of UTs are available, and a number of selected AT combinations.

FORS pipeline recipes for the reduction of data obtained with the FORS1 and FORS2 instruments in the LSS, MOS, MXU, PMOS, and direct imaging instrument modes.

FORS is the visual and near UV FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph for the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Two versions of FORS have been built, upgraded and moved to the Cassegrain foci of different telescopes in the past years. In April 2009, FORS1 was dismounted to make room for X-shooter, so only FORS2 is in operation. FORS is designed as an all-dioptric instrument for the wavelength range from 330 nm to 1100 nm and provides an image scale of 0".25/pixel (or 0".125/pixel with the high resolution collimator) in the standard readout mode (2x2 binning). FORS2 is installed on UT1 (Antu) and is by default equipped with a detector system that is optimised for the red with a very low level of fringes thanks to a mosaic of two 2k x 4k MIT CCDs (with 15 μm pixels). However, the blue-optimised detector system that was previously available on FORS1 has been commissioned on FORS2 and can be requested for Visitor Mode observation. The geometries of both detector systems are similar, with the optical axis falling ~30" above the gap and offsets of a few arc-seconds between the two chips. FORS2 has many modes, including multi-object spectroscopy with exchangable masks, long-slit spectroscopy, imaging and spectro-polarimetry and high-time resolution imaging and spectroscopy.

This is the data reduction pipeline for the GIRAFFE instrument of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

GIRAFFE is a medium-high resolution (R=7500-30000) spectrograph for the entire visible range 370-900 nm. GIRAFFE is aimed at carrying out intermediate and high resolution spectroscopy of galactic and extragalactic objects having a high spatial density. The name comes from the first design, where the spectrograph was standing vertically on a platform.

This is the data reduction pipeline for the HAWK-I instrument of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

HAWK-I is a near-infrared (0.85-2.5 μm ) wide-field imager. It is being offered for the first time in Period 81. The instrument is cryogenic (120 K, detectors at 80 K) and has a full reflective design. The light passes four mirrors and two filter wheels before hitting a mosaic of four Hawaii 2RG 2048 * 2048 pixels detectors. The final F-ratio is F/4.36 ( 1 arcsec on the sky corresponds to 169 μm on the detector).

This is the data reduction pipeline for the KMOS instrument of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

The K-band Multi Object Spectrograph (KMOS) is a second-generation instrument designed for operation on the VLT. The key feature of KMOS is its ability to perform Integral Field Spectroscopy in the near-infrared bands for 24 targets simultaneously.

This is the data reduction pipeline for the Muse instrument of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

MUSE, the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, is an Integral Field Spectrograph located at the Nasmyth B focus of Yepun, the VLT UT4 telescope. It has a modular structure composed of 24 identical IFU modules that together sample, in Wide Field Mode (WFM), a near-contiguous 1 squared arcmin field of view. Spectrally the instrument samples almost the full optical domain with a mean resolution of 3000. Spatially, the instrument samples the sky with 0.2 arcseconds spatial pixels in the currently offered Wide Field Mode with natural seeing (WFM-noAO).

This is the data reduction pipeline for the NaCo instrument of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

NaCo is short for NAOS-CONICA. It was installed at the Nasmyth B focus of UT4 from 2001 through 2013. In 2014 it was reinstalled on UT1 at the Nasmyth A. It provides adaptive optics assisted imaging, imaging polarimetry, coronography and spectroscopy, in the 1-5 micron range.

This is the data reduction pipeline for the SINFONI instrument of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

SINFONI is a near-infrared (1.1 - 2.45 µm) integral field spectrograph fed by an adaptive optics module, currently installed at the Cassegrain focus of UT4. The spectrograph operates with 4 gratings (J, H, K, H+K) providing a spectral resolution around 2000, 3000, 4000 in J, H, K, respectively, and 1500 in H+K - each wavelength band fitting fully on the 2048 pixels of the Hawaii 2RG (2kx2k) detector in the dispersion direction. The spatial resolution is selectable from 0.25", 0.1" to 0.025" per image slice, which corresponds to a field-of-view of 8"x8", 3"x3", or 0.8"x0.8" respectively. The instrument can be also used for seeing limited open loop observations.

This is the data reduction pipeline for the UVES instrument of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

UVES is a cross-dispersed echelle spectrograph designed to operate with high efficiency from the atmospheric cut-off at 300 nm to the long wavelength limit of the CCD detectors (about 1100 nm). The light beam from the telescope is split in two arms (UV to Blue, and Visual to Red) within the instrument. The two arms can be operated separately, or in parallel via a dichroic beam splitter. The resolving power is about 40,000 when a 1-arcsec slit is used. The maximum (two-pixel) resolution is 80,000 or 110,000 in the Blue- and the Red Arm, respectively.

This is the data reduction pipeline for the Vimos instrument of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

VIMOS is a multi-mode wide-field optical instrument mounted at the Nasmyth focus B of UT3. VIMOS allows imaging in UBVRIz and multi-object low (R ~ 200) to high (R ~ 2500) resolution spectroscopy. The wavelength range covered in the two spectroscopic modes goes from 360 to 1000 nm. VIMOS is made of 4 quadrants of 7'x8' each separated by a gap of about 2'.

This is the data reduction pipeline for the Visir instrument of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

The VLT spectrometer and imager for the mid-infrared (VISIR) was built by CEA/DAPNIA/SAP and NFRA/ASTRON, and is located at the Cassegrain focus of UT3. It provides diffraction-limited imaging at high sensitivity in the two mid infrared (MIR) atmospheric windows: the N band between 8 to 13μm and the Q band between 16.5 and 24.5μm, respectively. In addition, it features a long-slitspectrometer with a range of spectral resolutions between 150 and 30000.

This is the data reduction pipeline for the XSHOOTER instrument of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

XSHOOTER is a multi wavelength (300-2500nm) medium resolution spectrograph mounted at the UT2 Cassegrain focus. XSHOOTER consists of 3 arms, each with optimized optics, dispersive elements and detectors:

• UVB, covering the wavelength range 300-559.5 nm,
• VIS, covering the wavelength range 559.5-1024 nm,
• NIR, covering the wavelength range 1024-2480 nm.

PDL gives standard perl the ability to COMPACTLY store and SPEEDILY manipulate the large N-dimensional data arrays which are the bread and butter of scientific computing. The idea is to turn perl in to a free, array-oriented, numerical language in the same sense as commercial packages like IDL and MatLab. One can write simple perl expressions to manipulate entire numerical arrays all at once. For example, using PDL the perl variable $a can hold a 1024x1024 floating point image, it only takes 4Mb of memory to store it and expressions like $a=sqrt($a)+2 would manipulate the whole image in a few seconds.

A simple interactive shell (perldl) is provided for command line use together with a module (PDL) for use in perl scripts.

HEALPix is an acronym for Hierarchical Equal Area isoLatitude Pixelization of a sphere. As suggested in the name, this pixelization produces a subdivision of a spherical surface in which each pixel covers the same surface area as every other pixel. It is commonly used to store all-sky astronomical images, most famously maps of the cosmic microwave background.

This package provides a Python wrapper around the C++ implementation of HEALPix.

ScientificPython is a collection of Python modules that are useful for scientific computing. Most modules are rather general, others belong to specific domains and will be of interest to only a small number of users (e.g. the module Scientific.IO.PDB). Almost all modules make extensive use of Numerical Python (NumPy)

CelestLab is a library of space flight dynamics functions written in Scilab. This library has been developed and is maintained by the CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales) for mission analysis purposes. The library is used by CNES for the trajectory analysis and orbit design for various type of missions. CelestLab gathers in ten modules about 200 functions that allow mission designers to perform various tasks such as: orbit propagation, attitude computation, elementary manoeuvre computation, change of reference frames, change of coordinates, three body orbit analysis. CelestLab has been validated against the CNES flight dynamics reference software. Selected examples from mission analysis typical studies are provided in the CelestLab help pages.

Thanks to this toolbox, a user can overload user-defined functions as if they were built-in functions.

This provides the capabilities to overload low-level Scilab's internal features.

Scilab library interfaces the MySQL C library. This module allows access to all functions available in the MySQL library in order to manage databases.

sunclock is an X11 application that displays a map of the Earth and indicates the illuminated portion of the globe by drawing sunlit areas dark on light, night areas as light on dark. In addition to providing local time for the default timezone, it also displays GMT time, legal and solar time of major cities, their latitude and longitude, and the mutual distances of arbitrary locations on Earth. Sunclock can display meridians, parallels, tropics and arctic circles. It has builtin functions that accelerate the speed of time and show the evolution of seasons.