ASTCATX -- Astronomical Catalog and Surveys Access Package The astcat package is a set of tasks for extracting astrometric and photometric calibration data from remote or local catalogs and filtering the catalog data, and for extracting FITS images from remote or local surveys and regularizing the header keywords in the extracted images. There is also a task for selecting images which contain catalog objects and locating the catalog objects in the image. The astcatx tasks are designed as a front end for the standard astrometric and photometric calibrations tasks and for use in automated pipelines where access to astrometric and photometric catalog data is often an important part of the reduction process. Astcat is a standard part of the IRAF 2.12 release. Astcatx should only be installed if there are no immediate plans to upgrade to IRAF 2.12, or in order to pick up any post 2.12 release bugs fixes. The current contents of the ASTCATX package are asttest - Run basic tests on the astcat package aclist - List the supported astrometric catalogs agetcat - Extract astrometry files from astrometric catalogs afiltcat - Filter astrometry files derived from astrometric catalogs adumpcat - Catalog access debugging task aslist - List the supported image surveys agetim - Extract FITS images from image surveys ahedit - Initialize the image wcs and set standard keywords aimfind - Select images containing catalog objects adumpim - Image survey access debugging task aregpars - Default region parameter set acatpars - Default astrometry file format parameter set afiltpars - Default astrometry file filtering parameters aimpars - Default image data parameters awcspars - Default image wcs parameters help ccsystems - Describe the supported celestial coordinate systems help catalogs - Describe the astrometric catalog configuration file help surveys - Describe the image surveys configuation file help afiles - Describe the standard astrometry file format ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First Release: May 03, 2002 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Standard Installation Instructions For The Astcatx Package Installation of this external package consists of obtaining the files, creating a directory containing the package, compiling the executables or installing precompiled executables, and defining the environment to load and run the package. The package may be installed for a site or as a personal installation. If you need help with these installation instructions contact iraf@noao.edu or call the IRAF HOTLINE at 520-318-8160. [arch] In the following steps you will need to know the IRAF architecture identifier for your IRAF installation. This identifier is similar to the host operating system type. The identifiers are things like "ssun" for Solaris, "alpha" for Dec Alpha, and "linux" or "redhat" for most Linux systems. The IRAF architecture identifier is defined when you run IRAF. Start the CL and then type cl> show arch .ssun This is the value you need to know without the leading '.', i.e. the IRAF architecture is "ssun" in the above example. [1-site] If you are installing the package for a site login as IRAF and edit the IRAF file defining the packages. % cd $hlib Define the environment variable astcatx to be the pathnames to the astcatx package root directory and the instrument database. The '$' character must be escaped in the VMS pathname and UNIX pathnames must be terminated with a '/'. Edit extern.pkg to include the following. reset astcatx = /local/astcatx/ task astcatx.pkg = astcatx$astcatx.cl Near the end of the hlib$extern.pkg file, update the definition of helpdb so it includes the astcatx help database, copying the syntax already used in the string. Add this line before the line containing a closing quote: ,astcatx$lib/helpdb.mip\ [1-personal] If you are installing the package for personal use define a host environment variable with the pathname of the directory where the package will be located (needed in order to build the package from the source code). Note that pathnames must end with '/'. For example: % setenv astcatx /local/astcatx/ In your login.cl or loginuser.cl file make the following definitions somewhere before the "keep" statement. reset astcatx = /local/astcatx/ task astcatx.pkg = astcatx$astcatx.cl printf ("reset helpdb=%s,astcatx$lib/helpdb.mip\nkeep\n", envget("helpdb")) | cl flpr If you will be compiling the package, as opposed to installing a binary distribution, then you need to define various environment variables. The following is for Unix/csh which is the main supported environment. # Example % setenv iraf /iraf/iraf/ # Path to IRAF root (example) % source $iraf/unix/hlib/irafuser.csh # Define rest of environment % setenv IRAFARCH ssun # IRAF architecture where you need to supply the appropriate path to the IRAF installation root in the first step and the IRAF architecture identifier for your machine in the last step. [2] Login into IRAF. Create a directory to contain the package files and the instrument database files. These directory should be outside the standard IRAF directory tree. cl> mkdir astcatx$ cl> cd astcatx [3] The package is distributed as a tar archive of sources. Note that IRAF includes a tar reader. The tar file is most commonly obtained via anonymous ftp. Below is an example from a Unix machine where the compressed files have the ".Z" extension. Files with ".gz" or ".tgz" can be handled similarly. cl> ftp iraf.noao.edu (140.252.1.1) login: anonymous password: [your email address] ftp> cd iraf/extern ftp> get astcatx.readme ftp> binary ftp> get astcatx.tar.Z ftp> quit cl> !uncompress astcatx.tar.Z The readme file contains these instructions. The in the optional executable distribution is replaced by the IRAF architecture identification for your computer. [4] Extract the source files from the tar archive using 'rtar". cl> softools so> rtar -xrf astcatx.tar so> bye On some systems, an error message will appear ("Copy 'bin.generic' to './bin fails") which can be ignored. Sites should leave the symbolic link 'bin' in the package root directory pointing to 'bin.generic' but can delete any of the bin. directories that won't be used. If there is no binary directory for the system you are installing it will be created when the package is compiled later or when the binaries are installed. If the binary executables have been obtained these are now extracted into the appropriate bin. directory. # Example of sparc installation. cl> cd astcatx cl> rtar -xrf astcatx-bin.sparc # Creates bin.sparc directory The tar file can be deleted once it has been successfully installed. [5] For a source installation you now have to build the package executable(s). First you configure the package for the particular architecture. cl> cd astcatx cl> mkpkg # Substitute sparc, ssun, alpha, etc. This will change the bin link from bin.generic to bin.. The binary directory will be created if not present. If an error occurs in setting the architecture then you may need to add an entry to the file "mkpkg". Just follow the examples in the file. To create the executables and move them to the binary directory cl> mkpkg -p astcatx update >& astcatx.spool # build executables cl> mkpkg generic # optionally restore generic setting Check for errors. If the executables are not moved to the binary directory then step [1] to define the path for the package was not done correctly. The last step restores the package to a generic configuration. This is not necessary if you will only have one architecture for the package. This should complete the installation. You can now load the package and begin testing and use. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------