From hack at stsci.edu Fri Feb 29 15:28:56 2008 From: hack at stsci.edu (Warren J. Hack) Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:28:56 -0500 Subject: [AstroPy] TABLES/STSDAS v3.68 and STScI_Python v2.6 now available Message-ID: <47C86B08.2090005@stsci.edu> ******************************************************* TABLES/STSDAS v3.8 and STSCI_PYTHON v2.6 NOW AVAILABLE ******************************************************* The Science Software Branch of the Space Telescope Science Institute wishes to announce the availability of version 3.8 of the Space Telescope Science Data Analysis Software (STSDAS). Concurrent with the STSDAS release, we have also released v3.8 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, STIS, WFPC/CALWP2, Dither, SYNPHOT, Nebular, and CTOOLS, with some minor changes to GFLIB. One new package has been added; namely, WFC3. This package currently only contains CALWF3, the pipeline processing software for WFC3 data. 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 2.6 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 and will be the last release to provide any support for the use of numarray. It has been reorganized such that tasks specific to each HST instrument are grouped as separate packages, with the addition of new tasks for WFPC2 and COS data. This release also contains an updated version of Multidrizzle as used by the HST ACS and WFPC2 pipelines, along with new versions of PyFITS and PyRAF. Use of the Python tasks requires upgrading to this version of STSCI_PYTHON. FIRST RELEASE TO USE NUMPY ========================== This release is the first release that uses numpy as the sole base array package. Numarray is no longer used by tasks within STScI_Python, although compatibility with numarray still exists in PyFITS and PyRAF in this release. Support for numarray will be eliminated entirely after this release. As a result, you are advised to migrate to numpy as soon as possible. This switch to numpy represents a step towards unifying the Python scientific community in the use of a common array package. This is a very desirable outcome despite the inconvenience in making the switch. 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 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 v3.8 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 2.6 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.