[AstroPy] TABLES/STSDAS v3.11 and STScI_Python v2.9 now available

[Warren J. Hack]

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     TABLES/STSDAS v3.11 and STSCI_PYTHON v2.9 NOW AVAILABLE

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The Science Software Branch of the Space Telescope
Science Institute wishes to announce the availability of version
3.11 of the Space Telescope Science Data Analysis Software (STSDAS).
Concurrent with the STSDAS release, we have also released v3.11 of
the TABLES external package. Both of these packages are layered upon
IRAF as external packages; it is therefore necessary to obtain and
install IRAF (from http://iraf.noao.edu) before installing TABLES
and STSDAS.  STSDAS is linked against libraries in TABLES, so TABLES
must be installed before STSDAS.

This release of STSDAS contains changes to NICMOS, ACS,
WFPC/CALWP2, COS, WFC3, and the Dither packages. This release
includes the same versions of the calibration software used in
the pipeline to support all active HST instruments after Servicing
Mission 4, including the new instrument Wide Field Camera 3(WFC3)
and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph(COS).

STSDAS also includes some Python-based tasks; running these requires the
STScI Python Libraries to be installed (all the non-Python tasks
can be used in the traditional way and do not require Python
or the STScI Python libraries). These tasks can only be run from
PyRAF using standard IRAF CL task syntax, or within Python scripts
using Python syntax.

The Science Software Branch of STScI also wishes to announce the
availability of version 2.9 of STSCI_PYTHON.  Stsci_python is a collection
of Python modules, packages and C extensions that has been developed to
provide a general astronomical data analysis infrastructure. They can
be used for Python tasks that are accessible from within STSDAS when
running under PyRAF or standalone from within Python.

All tasks in this release of STScI_Python rely on the use of numpy
for array operations. All references to numarray and Numeric have been
removed from the code, with support no longer being provided for use of
numarray or Numeric.

This distribution continues to develop packages with tasks specific
to each HST instrument, with updates being made to code for NICMOS
and COS.  This release also contains an updated version of Multidrizzle
and PyDrizzle as used by the HST ACS and WFPC2 pipelines, along with
significantly updated versions of PyFITS and PyRAF.  Use of the Python
tasks requires upgrading to this version of STSCI_PYTHON.

No More support for numarray
============================
Numarray is no longer used by tasks within STScI_Python. You are advised
to migrate to numpy to use this release, as no further support will be
provided for the use of numarray.

Information on making the switch to numpy from numarray can
be found in this document:

http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/numarray/numarray2numpy.pdf

Platform Support
================
This release does not contain STSDAS/Tables binaries for PowerPC
Macintosh systems. However, there are no known reasons why a user
could not build this package from source code on a PowerPC using the
installation instructions for STSDAS.

STSDAS/Tables Binaries for this release were built on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 4, Solaris 5.8, and Mac OS X 10.5 (Intel architecture
only).

STSDAS/Tables Binaries were built with IRAF 2.14, except for
Solaris, which were built with IRAF 2.12.2a.  IRAF is available from
http://iraf.net.

In addition, this distribution of STScI_Python was tested to correctly
support installation on Linux, Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), and Solaris
(with some limitations for PyRAF), while also being provided (without
PyRAF) for installation under Windows.


STSCI_Python on WINDOWS
=======================
This release includes a port of stsci_python that runs natively under
Windows.  Although IRAF is now available for running under Cygwin,
PyRAF is not yet available for use under Windows. This means that,
in this release, all the tasks in the STScI_Python distribution will
be run under Python (or preferably, IPython) on Windows using Python
syntax rather than a parameter-based interface provided by PyRAF
and IRAF.

The primary requirement is that the Windows executables were built
against and, therefore, can run only under Python 2.5.


WHERE TO OBTAIN THIS SOFTWARE
=============================
STSDAS/TABLES v3.11 can be downloaded from the STSDAS web site

http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/stsdas/download

Installation instructions are available on the web site. Precompiled
binaries also exist for some of the ports supported by NOAO, including
Sun Solaris, RedHat Linux and Mac OS X.

STSCI_PYTHON v 2.9 be downloaded from the PyRAF web site

http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/pyraf/stsci_python/current/download

Installation instructions are available from the PyRAF web site, with
support for installations on Sun Solaris, RedHat Linux, Mac OS X,
and Windows.

Please contact us through e-mail (help at stsci.edu), by telephone at
(410) 338-1082.