[AstroPy] Kapteyn Package 2.2 released

[Hans Terlouw]

We would like to announce the release of version 2.2 of the Kapteyn
Package, a collection of Python modules developed by the computer group
of the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen, The
Netherlands.


New features:

- A class for solving non-linear least squares problems using the
   Levenberg-Marquardt technique. It is based on the implementation in C
   of Craig Markwardt’s MPFIT routine. Besides reference documentation,
   an extensive tutorial is provided.

- Many smaller improvements and some bugfixes.


Other features:

- Classes for the handling of spatial and spectral coordinates, WCS
   projections and transformations between different sky systems.
   For WCS, Dr. Mark Calabretta's WCSLIB 4.13.3 is used. WCSLIB is
   integrated in the package and need not be installed separately.

- Tools for writing small applications for the display and interactive
   inspection of (FITS) data and for the creation of plots with world
   coordinate information, including all-sky plots. A class for plotting
   shapes like ellipses, rectangles and regular polygons. Support for
   RGB-coded images.

- Utilities for use with Matplotlib such as obtaining coordinate
   information from plots and interactively modifiable colormaps.

- A class for the efficient reading, writing and manipulating of simple
   table-like structures in text files.

- A function for estimating Gaussian components in a profile. These
   estimates could subsequently be used as initial estimates for a least
   squares fit.


Currently supported architectures are Linux, Apple Mac OS X and
Microsoft Windows.

Extensive documentation, including tutorial and background information,
as well as download and installation instructions can be found at
http://www.astro.rug.nl/software/kapteyn/


-- 
Hans Terlouw
Kapteyn Astronomical Institute
University of Groningen
Postbus 800
NL-9700 AV Groningen
The Netherlands

Phone: +31-(0)50-3634068/73
Fax:   +31-(0)50-3636100