Subject: AAS WGAS meeting

From: dirk at spacsun.rice.edu (Dirk Valk)
Date: 4 Jun 1992 16:48:50 GMT

I notice in the advance release of the AAS meeting abstracts that W. Pence
will be discussing the 'FTOOLS' package of IRAF software at the WGAS
meeting (Sessions 14, talk 1).  The abstract mentions that the planned
release date will be discussed, as well as the suite of software that will
comprise the package.  I won't be attending the meeting, but I think it
would be useful if anyone who does would post a brief summary to this
newsgroup.  Volunteers?

-- 
: Dirk Valk             |"And if it doesn't work out,                      :
: Rice Univeristy       | There'll never be any doubt,                     :
: dirk at spacsun.rice.edu | That the pleasure was worth all the pain."       :
: Space Physics & Astro.|                         - Jimmy Buffett          :

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From: hanisch at stsci.edu (Bob Hanisch)
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1992 19:39:58 GMT

> would be useful if anyone who does would post a brief summary to this

In a previous message Dirk Valk asked if someone would post a brief
summary of my talk at the AAS meeting on Monday on the FTOOLS FITS file
utility package.  First, thank you for the free advertisement for my
talk.  I will be happy to post a summary of the talk here after I get
back from the meeting.  In the meantime, here is the abstract that I
sent to the AAS:

\begin{abstract}
FTOOLS - A New Package of Programs to Manipulate and Process FITS Format Files

The High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC)
is developing a comprehensive set of programs to manipulate and analyze
files in FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) format.  One
consequence of this project is to greatly expand the usage of FITS from
simply a transport or interchange format to a convenient and versatile
format to be used directly for data reduction and analysis.  The FTOOLS
utilities are specifically being written to process the data from the
Astro-D X-ray satellite, but the tools themselves are very general and
can be used to analyze any FITS format file.  These utilities are built
on top of the FITSIO subroutine library and are written in ANSI
standard Fortran or C.  The software is easily portable to different
processing environments and will be available as an IRAF package as
well as a set of stand-alone executable tasks on VMS or Unix systems.
The current status of FITSIO and FTOOLS will be described along with
plans for future enhancements.
\end{abstract}

Bill Pence, NASA/GSFC (c/o Bob Hanisch, ST ScI)

-- 
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