Urania

As noted in my last blog post, SciSoft OSX Intel 2008.3.1 was released a few days ago. While I am Cerro Tololo, last night was our “training night” on the instrument, so I did get a decent night of sleep, so I decided to take some time and see what is in this new SciSoft OSX Intel 2008.3.1 package in detail. Because I didn’t want to lose my functional version of SciSoft OSX, especially during an observing run, I first moved the directory containing my functional SciSoft OSX install temporarily out of the way via the command line: sudo mv /scisoft /scisoft_old Having done that I double-clicked on the installer package and let it do its thing, installing everything in the /scisoft directory. According the CONTENTS file at the top level of the /scisoft directory, the main changes were

• If you have SuperMongo (SM), you can request the new version. It has jumped from version SM 2.4.16 to SM 2.4.26. I don’t have a license for SuperMongo, so I can’t report much beyond this. This version of SM has Aquaterm support.
• FV, the FITS file viewer, was updated to version 5.1 from version 4.4 (they changed numbering conventions, I think). The CONTENTS file accidentally lists it as version 1.1.
• Numpy (which is used in PyRAF extensively) was updated from version 1.0.3 to the current version 1.0.4.
• stsci_python (which is also used in PyRAF extensively) went from version 2.5 to the current version 2.6.
• The mkiraf command line program that creates user’s IRAF directories appears to have been fixed for c-shell users. The bug (along with a fix) had been noted by Nor Pirzkal on his blog, so I am not surprised it was rolled into this release.
• The IRAF external packages STSDAS and TABLES when from version 3.7 to current version 3.8. The change in STSDAS includes a new package for processing WFC3 data (since I don’t use HST, I’m not that excited at the moment by this change, but I am sure someone is).
• The ESO-MIDAS version is listed as unchanged from the last release of SciSoft OSX, although the release notes just noted that “[t]his version includes a recompiled version of MIDAS (which was not tested under 10.4)”. The installed version is listed as 07FEBpl1.1 whereas the current version is 08FEBpl1.1.
• The version of DS9 included with this install of SciSoft is the current version 5.1 Aqua. This replaces the X11-based version previously included. I haven’t checked to see if it works in previous MacOS X installs, but it works fine in MacOS 10.5.2 (aka Leopard). If you do need to install a version of ds9 more appropriate to your MacOS X or if you are like me and prefer the X11 version of ds9, you can easily change the installed version.
  • If you are using an earlier MacOS X than Leopard and find the Aqua version of DS9 isn’t working, you can download an appropriate DS9 for you at http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD/ds9/ and install it within SciSoft by noting that SciSoft OSX places the DS9 application at /scisoft/i386/Applications/SAOImage DS9.app. You could rename the installed DS9 application via the Finder or from the command line,

    mv /scisoft/i386/Applications/SAOImage\ DS9.app /scisoft/i386/Applications/SAOImage\ DS9\ \(Disabled\).app

    then if you want the Tiger (Aqua) version there, just place it in the /scisoft/i386/Applications/ directory.
  • I happen to prefer the X11 version of DS9 usually because I use pipe files to connect my IRAF session to my DS9 session and I have found that the Aqua version of ds9 doesn’t seem to play nicely in this regard. Its for that reason I installed the X11 version over the command line ds9. To do this, I noticed the command line ds9 is at /scisoft/i386/bin/ds9 and is just a symbolic link to the ds9 binary within the Application. You can just rename this symbolic link at /scisoft/i386/bin/ds9 from the command line:

    mv /scisoft/i386/bin/ds9 /scisoft/i386/bin/ds9.old

    and place the executable ds9 file that is in the X11-version tarball of ds9 there instead.

    mv ds9 /scisoft/i386/bin/ds9

    This has the added advantage of leaving the Aqua version of DS9 completely intact.
• I noticed this version of SciSoft OSX does install with me as the owner (instead of user 502). I don’t know if that is because it is defaulting to user 501 or because a change occurred in the SciSoft OSX installer, but its a welcome change.

That’s it for what I have noticed for now. This update addressed all of the issues I has noted with the previous version. Thanks guys! One very mild issue I have with this version of SciSoft OSX. I noticed the RVSAO external package for IRAF included with this version of SciSoft OSX is Version 2.5.7. That’s several versions older than the current version. Its easy enough to install the current version in another directory (I use /usr/local/iraf) and then edit the /scisoft/all/packages/iraf/iraf/unix/hlib/extern.pkg file to point to the newer install, but I thought I would note that.