SAOImage DS9 Version 7 New Features

Version 7.3

64 bit Applications

DS9 now fully supports 64 bit applications across all platforms. New support for 64 bit MacOSX Aqua has been added, along with 64 bit Windows Cygwin.

2D Plots

New and improved GUI
Support for data set legend
Improvements in rendering
Error bar caps are now supported

Mouse Mode

The default mouse mode is now NONE and not REGION or POINTER. This prevents unwanted region creation went bringing the DS9 window to the front in most Window managers.

Other Enhancements

Improved rendering of rotated text
Support for ENVI data format
3D Image caching
3D Background Image rendering
Dramatic improvements in analysis speed of large 3D data sets
New Segment region

Version 7.2

FITS

DS9 now fully supports complex FITS images such as data cubes, multiple extension data cubes, mosaics, RGB images, and 3D images. In addition, DS9 can be use to create complex FITS images from multiple FITS files and other image formats. Furthermore, complex FITS images can be easily disassembled into individual images and saved in FITS or other image formats.

Common API

XPA and SAMP now share the same API as the command line interface. Backward compatibility is maintained to previous versions of DS9.

Other Enhancements

More robust handling of SEGV and SIGBUS events
DS9 now distinguishes between BLANK/NAN/INF values
saveimage now supports EPS
Support for NRRD (Nearly RAW Raster Data) data format
Added support for exporting RGB images in TIFF, JPEG, or PNG
Improvement for FITS compression support
Released under GPL v3

Version 7.1

Catalog Matching

DS9 now supports catalog matching. From the Catalog menu option, the user selects two currently loaded catalogs, an error radius, and matching function. The user may request all sources that are present in both catalogs, or in one catalog and not in the other. Each catalog need not to be specified in the same world coordinate system.

Enhanced Plot Tool

In addition to a Line Plot Tool, DS9 now supports additional Bar and Scatter Plots Tools. The GUI for the Plot Tools have been enhanced and new features have been added including statistics and data lists. Each Plot Tool supports multiple data sets and custom plotting options.

Catalog Scatter Plots

The user may now plot the results of two columns of a loaded catalog as a scatter plot. A selected region on the image will highlight the corresponding row and plot point. Likewise, a selected row or plot point will highlight the corresponding image region.

Interactive Region Analysis

DS9 regions now support interactive region analysis. The analysis tasks are enabled by selecting the Analysis Menu in a region's dialog box. Interactive analysis tasks includes statistics, data cuts in 2D and 3D, and radial profiles.

Other Enhancements

3D scaling along the z axis of data cubes
Lock/Match Smoothing option
WCS dialog support for non-linear projections such as TAN-SIP and SCAMP
Support for FITS files larger than 2Gb has been improved

Version 7.0

3-D Data Visualization

Previous versions of SAOImage DS9 would allow users to load 3-D data into traditional 2-D frames, and would allow users to step through successive z-dimension pixel slices of the data cube. To visualize 3-D data in DS9 v. 7.0, a new module, encompassed by the new Frame 3D option, allows users to load and view data cubes in multiple dimensions.

The new module implements a simple ray-trace algorithm. For each pixel on the screen, a ray is projected back into the view volume, based on the current viewing parameters, returning a data value if the ray intersects the FITS data cube. To determine the value returned, there are 2 methods available, Maximum Intensity Projection (MIP) and Average Intensity Projection (AIP). MIP returns the maximum value encountered, AIP returns an average of all values encountered. At this point, normal DS9 operations are applied, such as scaling, clipping and applying a color map.

Rendering time is independent of the actual data cube size. Instead, the time it takes to render is based on how many rays are needed to project the data cube upon the screen in the view volume and the current zoom factor. The new module requires no special hardware or graphical processor unit (GPU) and the rendering time is adequate for interactive GUI manipulation on most computers. The rendering engine is developed using the POSIX thread library, allowing multiple light weight processes to be spawned to complete an image in parallel. The number of threads actually generated is a user specified parameter. Since all modern hardware contain multiple CPU cores, the default value is 8 threads. For larger work stations, this number can be increase. For every doubling in the number of CPU cores available, rendering times decrease approximately 75%.

The new module is support on all hardware platforms currently supported by DS9, including 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Linux and MacOSX, and 32-bit versions of Windows and Solaris.

All 2-D graphics, regions, cross hairs, contours, and coordinate grids, are applied to the current slice, which is selected by the user. When the user wishes to match or lock a 2-D image and to a 3-D data cube, the current slice is used to determine the rendering solution. The user can crop the data cube for all 3 axes via the command line or the GUI. The new module also supports FITS event files binned into a data cube.

All printing support has been extended to the new 3-D module. The user may generate 3-D images in Postscript, JPEG, TIFF, and other formats, just as in the 2-D case. Furthermore, native printing is supported for the Windows version.

DS9 analysis macros have been enhanced to fully support the new 3-D module, allowing the user to invoke external analysis tasks based on the current view parameters and to return results back into DS9 in the form of text, plot, 2-D image, or 3-D image.

Funding for 3-D data visualization was provided by the JWST Mission office at Space Telescope Science Institute (NAS-03127)

Color Tags

The purpose of color tags are to highlight (or hide) certain values of data, regardless of the color map selected. The user creates, edits, and deletes color tags via the GUI. To create a color tag, enter the Colorbar Mode, and click once on the colorbar. This creates a default color tag. Click and drag to change the values. Click and drag on one side to increase or decrease the value. Double click to manually edit the values and color. Place the cursor over the color tag and press the delete key to delete it. From the color parameters dialog, the user can load, save, and delete all color tags for that frame.

Regions

Regions now support analysis tasks unique to each region type. In the menu of the region dialog, the Analysis menu will contain any type specific analysis tasks. The Circle, Ellipse, Box, Polygon, and Point regions now support interactive 1-D cuts along the 3rd axis of 3-D data cubes. The Line, Vector, and Projection regions support 2-D cuts through the current slice of 2-D and 3-D data. The Auto Plot option under the regions preferences can be used to specify if a plot is automatically generated when the region is created.

Analysis

DS9 analysis macros have been enhanced to fully support the new 3-D module, allowing the user to invoke external analysis tasks on the current slice of 3-D data cube. The macro $z is now supported for 3-D data. In support of Funtools, the PLANE keyword is supported.

Slice

DS9 now allows the user to load a 3-D data cube one slice at a time via the GUI or from the command line. Use the option -slice to specify that all following 2-D files are to be interpreted as a slice of a 3-D data cube.

Photo

DS9 can now load images in TIFF, JPEG, and PNG file format directly. When loaded into a Frame, the average of the luminosity is used. When loaded into a Frame RGB, each channel is loaded directly. Use the -photo command line option to specify that all following files are to be interpreted as a photo image.

Export

DS9 will export the current image in TIFF, JPEG, or PNG file format with the current colorbar parameters applied. The entire image is exported (not just the visible portion) at the native resolution.

Lock/Match

The support for the Lock/Match functionality of DS9 has been greatly enhanced. The user may choose to lock/match frames, the cross hair, cropping, the current slice, binning parameters, scale parameters, or color map parameters.

Crop

DS9 now supports cropping the current image, via the GUI, command line, or XPA/SAMP in both 2-D and 3-D. The user may specify a rectangular region of the image data as a center and width/height in any coordinate system via the Crop Dialog, or can interactively select the region of the image to display by clicking and dragging while in Crop Mode. For 3-D frames, the shift-click to change the front clip plane, and control-click to change the back clip plane. From the command line, cropping parameters can be specified in IRAF format.

ASINH Scale

A new scale function has been added, ashinh, based on the arc sinh function. This new function has similar properties as the log function, with a=10.

All new GUI

DS9 now supports basic GUI elements (buttons, menus, etc) via the native window manager API. Each port of DS9 will have a native look and feel of each hardware platform. DS9 will take advantage of the current user selected Theme if supported by the native windowing system.

Postscript

DS9 now generates identical postscript code for a particular image, regardless of which hardware platform was used to generate the image.

Catalogs

The user may now specify coordinates in any equatorial system (not just FK5) for a catalog search and receive results in any equatorial system, to be plotted or saved. Local catalogs in any equatorial system are now supported.

New WCS support

New WCS support for non-FITS WCS projections have been added to DS9: TNX, ZPX, SCAMP, SIP and HEALPIX.  The keyword WCSDEP is now supported.

Enhancements and improvements have been made in the support for the following FITS WCS projections: COD, COO, COE, COP, ZEA, and CAR.

DS9 now supports non-equatorial long/lat coordinate systems in the form of xLON/xLAT and xyLN/xyLT. This includes solar WCS HPLN/HPLT, HGLN/HGLT, and HRLN/HRLT systems.

DS9 now fully supports multiple alternative celestial WCS, if specified. All cut/paste/copy operations, catalog, image server, contour, regions, and coordinate grids will now use the default WCS as selected by the user, via the WCS menu item.

HEALPIX

DS9 now supports native HEALPIX maps, in both FITS binary table and ascii table form. Any table with keyword PIXTYPE=HEALPIX or NSIDE=x will be processed as an HEALPIX image. The user may specify HEALPIX parameters within the file specification to indicate RING (default) or NESTED order, Coordinate System (default is Unknown),  Quadrant (default is first), and Equator (default), North, or South layout. The appropriate WCS is generated for the image.

External Analysis Files

DS9 will now look for external analysis files in the following locations at start up: the current directory, $HOME/bin, /usr/local/bin, /opt/local/bin, and /soft/saord/bin in the form of *.ds9. If found, they will be automatically loaded. Users may disable this feature via the presences analysis panel. DS9 will continue to load ds9.ans and ds9.analysis if found, and users specified analysis files as before. DS9 will verify that the same analysis file is not loaded twice to avoid duplication of analysis menus.

For more detailed information, Please see Release Notes