MacFITSview 1.4


     Please send any comments and/or bug reports to Bill Cotton 
(bcotton@nrao.edu). 

   MacFITSview is a viewer for astronomical images in the FITS
(Flexible Image Transport System) for Macintosh computers.
MacFITSview allows the user to select and display images.  Celestial
positions (including WCS) and brightnesses of pixels in the image may
be obtained.  Other features include zoom and scroll, modyfing the
color table and marking positions of interest.  MacFITSview may be
started by dragging the icon for a FITS file and dropping it onto the
MacFITSview icon.

   MacFITSview requires System 7.0 or later, an 8-bit display or
better and at least 1 Mbyte of *available* memory (but more is
definitely better).  The memory needed depends on the FITS images
loaded.  The installation uses about 1.3 Mbyte of hard disk space but
about 1 Mbyte of this is demonstration FITS (*.FIT) files which can be
deleted.  

   The binary files for MacFITSview are distributed in binhex (*.hqx)
format and text files as *.txt files.  These files need to be
converted to Mac format and the ".txt" removed from the name before
use. There are two executables, one for the Power PC 
(MacFITSview.PPC) and one for older 68xxx Macs (MacFITSview.68k).  
The 68xxx version does not support a floating point unit.  
MacFITSview.Help is the online documentation for the program.

New in release 1.1
------------------
1) This release supports Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) image coordinates
as well as the standard World Coordinate System (WCS) coordinates.

New in release 1.2
------------------
1) Allow the user selection of the coordinate Equinox for
displayed and entered positions.  
2) Given a celestial position, look up the appropriate file in a
directory index and load the image. 
3) Copy the currently displayed image into a specified FITS file.
4) Widen search for peak pixel around specified position when fitting
positions. 

Changes in release 1.3
------------------
1) If the FITS file uses dss coordinates, "source info" now gives the 
wcs coordinates for the center of the field.
2) Bug fixes.

Changes in release 1.4
------------------------
1) MacFITSview now makes more reasonable guesses of the range of pixel 
values to display and has a histogram equalization option.
2) Fix bug which caused some images with very small values to appear
as all black.  Fix bugs in handling of dss coordinates and allow using 
IRAF CD matrix coordinates.  Fixed header parsing routines to ignore 
leading zeroes.

   A demonstration pair of FITS images, NGC1316R.FIT and NGC1316O.FIT,
is distributed with MacFITSview.  These images are in radio and
optical light of the same region of the sky and are suitable for
blinking. There is also a description of these files in NGC1316.DOC.

   This software is distributed free of charge by the National Radio
Astronomy Observatory which is a facility of the National Science Foundation
operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
Only very limited user support of this software is available.
Suggestions and comments should be sent to Bill Cotton at NRAO
(bcotton@nrao.edu).  NRAO's headquarters address is: 
NRAO, 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA. 
This Software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but 
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.