Urania

Fast on the heals of their release of version 5.3 about two weeks ago, the folks at the SAO have released version 5.4 of SAOImage DS9. Here are the links to the downloadable Mac-related SAOImage files

• Aqua 10.4 Tiger (Universal)
• Aqua 10.5 Leopard (Universal)
• X11 10.4 Tiger (Universal)
• X11 10.5 Leopard (Universal)
• X11 10.5 Leopard (Universal) with Firewall

The release notes for SAOImage DS9 don’t necessarily suggest dramatic changes in this version relative to version 5.3.

1. CATALOGS: removed support for Chandra Source Catalog at request of Ian Evans of CXC (only added on October 3, 2008).
2. MASKS: add support for mask transparency.
3. MASKS: add new mask properties.
4. GRID: add grid title support.

My previously posted notes on integrating upgrades of DS9 into the Scisoft OS X installation still work. Just note that newer releases of Scisoft OS X place the binaries in /Applications/scisoft/i386/bin/ instead of /scisoft/i386/bin/ and if you are installing the X11 binary that is compatible with the firewall, you have to install both the ds9 and ds9.zip file in the bin/ directory of Scisoft OSX.

Every Semester in introductory astronomy we run a series of field trips out to the Paul J. Feder Observatory which lies about 14 miles from the MSUM campus. As such, I like to check the weather before going out there and usually do so with a quick look at Attilla Danko’s Clear Sky Chart website. It occurred to me it would be nice to see if a Dashboard widget to show the Clear Sky Chart existed. I found two. The one by Joshua Lynch worked well, but it had a major problem, it never listed the Paul J. Feder Observatory as a site I could examine. I ended up biting the bullet and looking at the code. Turns out Joshua Lynch released the code open source. Therefore, I felt free to start hacking on the Dashboard widget (learning how to program widgets in the process). The result is the Clear Sky Clock Widget (version 1.3). The key changes I made to the widget were:

1. Fixed a parsing bug that prevented the loading of any Clear Sky Chart for sites containing parentheses or periods in their names. It was this bug that was interfering with the loading of our observatory’s Clear Sky Clock.
2. Since the Clear Sky Chart is quite large and many people will use the widget on laptops with small screens, I added a “Half-size mode“. All you do is click on the “Toggle Size” link on the widget. This shrinks the charge and saves screen real estate.
3. With Attilla Danko’s permission, I added a Built-in Legend (copied from his site) for interpreting the Clear Sky Chart to the widget. Just click on the charge and the legend appears. Click again and it goes away.
4. I also added a link to the Clear Sky Charge site page, so if I wanted more detailed information, I can get it there.

I hope a few Mac-owning astronomers in the U.S. and Canada find this widget useful.

The folks at the SAO have finally released a version of SAOImage DS9 (version 5.3) that plays well with the current version of the MacOS Firewall (as of MacOS 10.5.5) . Here are the links to the downloadable Mac-related SAOImage files

• Aqua 10.4 Tiger (Universal)
• Aqua 10.5 Leopard (Universal)
• X11 10.4 Tiger (Universal)
• X11 10.5 Leopard (Universal)
• X11 10.5 Leopard (Universal) with Firewall

To quote the release notes on the SAOImage DS9 website, the changes in the newly released version 5.3 are

Regions: Regions now support a centroid function. The centroid function can be manually invoked or regions can automatically snap to a centroid when moved or edited. Regions now have a DASH line property.

Colorbar: Now supports a vertical colorbar layout option, via the View Menu. Users can configure the font type and size of the colorbar, via the View Menu.

GUI: Now supports a vertical button bar, when in vertical layout mode.

Aqua MacOSX 10.5 firewall: The MacOSX Aqua 10.5 Leopard port of DS9 can be used with the MacOSX 10.5 firewall enabled.

X11 MacOSX 10.5: There are now two versions available for X11 MacOSX 10.5 Leopard. The non-firewall version is recommended for all unless you wish to enable the 10.5 firewall. [Juan's Note: While not stating this, they mean specifically the application-specific version of the MacOS firewall. See my notes on this problem here.] In that case, please use the firewall enabled version. Please note: this version consist of 2 files, ds9 and ds9.zip. It is very important that ds9.zip be placed in the same directory as the ds9 binary at all times.

Contours: Contours now have a DASH line option.

I have previously posted notes for integrating upgrades of DS9 into the Scisoft OS X installation and they still work just fine except that newer releases of Scisoft OS X place the binaries in /Applications/scisoft/i386/bin/ instead of /scisoft/i386/bin/ and if you are installing the X11 binary that is compatible with the firewall, you have to install both the ds9 and ds9.zip file in the bin/ directory of Scisoft OSX.