WCSTools 3.8.1

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 3.8.1 of the WCSTools package developed by Doug Mink
(dmink@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 for (network access),
Jing Li of IPAC (distortion), and
Pat Wallace of Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK (coordinate conversion).

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, and
others of SAO and Andreas Jaunsen helped debug the astrometry programs.
Sergio Pascual of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid helped me get
all of the variables initialized.

Details of updates are in the NEWS file.

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, Gareth Hunt and
     H. E. Payne, eds., 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 (1998), in Astronomical Data Analysis Software and
     Systems VIII, A.S.P. Conference Series, Vol. 172, 1999, Dave Mehringer,
     Ray Plante, Doug Roberts, eds., 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, 2001, to be published in Astronomical Data Analysis
     Software and Systems XI, whenever it comes out.

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, 2002, to be published in
     Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XII, whenever it comes out.

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 in Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XIII,
ASP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 314. Edited by Francois Oschenbein, Mark Allen,
and Daniel Egret. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
ISSN: 1080-7926, 2004., p. 141. 

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.

-Doug Mink, SAO, 2009-12-14
