SAOImage DS9 Version 3.0 New Features

RGB Images

DS9 now supports RGB Images. An RGB Image is an image which is composed of 3 color channels, red, green, and blue. In each channel is loads a FITS image, FITS binary table, or FITS Mosaic. Each channel has its own Scale and Bin parameters. DS9 will align the images in the three channels base on the WCS, Physical, or Image coordinates. For more information, see File Menu, XPA, and Command  Line Options.

DS9 support two new file formats for RGB images. The first is FITS Data Cube, containing 3 slices which represent the red, green, and blue color channels. The second, is a FITS Multiple Extension file, containing 3 extensions, again representing the red, green, and blue color channels. For more information, please see File Formats.

Improved Support for Web based Archives

A number of improvements have been implement to support web based archives. This includes expanded support for the proposed FITS Mime-Type RFC.

Improved Plot Widget Support

Analysis plots now support multiple data sets, and can be fully configured via xpa.

Large File Support

Selected ports of ds9 now support very large files, typically larger than 2Gb. Furthermore, memory management has been enhanced to greatly improve performance when processing very large files.

Improved Contour Support

Contours are more accurate and a number of improvements have been made.

Save As

Support for SAVE AS jpeg, tiff, png, ppm, and mpeg is now internal to SAOImage DS9 and is available for all ports. Ghost Script is no longer required.

New Windows Port

SAOImage DS9 for windows is an all new port which only requires 2 DLLs. A number of features previously available in other ports are now available in the Windows port as well.

New MacOS X Port

The SAOImage DS9 for MacOSX (darwin) is self-contained in one executable file and no longer requires external dynamic libraries.

Background and Nan/Inf Color support

The user may select the image background color and the color to be used to display NaN/Inf numbers via the preferences menu.

Improved Mosaic Support

Support for Mosaic images has been improved and a number of new display modes implemented, including Multiple Extension Data Cubes, IRAF Mosaics, WCS Mosaics, WCS Linear Mosaics and WFPC2 Mosaics.

MPEG-1 Support

Multiple frames or datacube images can now be saved as a MPEG-1 movie. The movie has a frame rate of 25 fps.

IRAF

DS9 now supports IRAF's new IIS image display protocol that supports up to 16 display frames.

Regions

Regions can now cut/copy and paste between frames. The user will be prompted for the coordinate system to be used.

Linux support for older versions

Two binary versions of ds9 for linux are now provided. The first is valid on all newer versions of linux. A second is for use with older versions of linux such as RedHat 6.x, 7.x, and 8.x.

Linux 64 support for AMD Opteron

Binaries for RH Fedora AMD Opteron are now provided.

Support for Split FITS files

Support for split FITS files has been added. A split FITS file is a valid FITS file that has been split into two files, a header file and a data file. XPA and command line options are provided with support for  both mmap and shared memory models.

For more detailed information, Please see Release Notes