Mac VISTA 1.3 Manual

MacVISTA Version 1.3.1 30 September 1992 Tim DeBenedictis 229 Commonwealth Av. Boston MA 02116 e-mail: timmyd@benz.mit.edu ©Tim DeBenedictis 1992 Portions ©THINK / Symantec MacVISTA version 1.0.0 p. 1 MacVISTA is a program for analysis of astronomical images. It was inspired by VISTA, a professional astronomical image-analysis program developed at Lick Observatory in 1982 for use on SUN, VAX, and other UNIX-based workstations. Originally I wrote MacVISTA as a tool for a research project at M.I.T.’s Center for Space Research. However, now that CCD-based imaging systems are relatively inexpensive, many amateur astronomers posess the same electronic imaging equipment available only at major observatories only a few years ago. MacVISTA is a program to assist those amateurs who do not have access to high-level workstations or state-of-the-art analysis software. All MacVISTA requires is a MacIntosh or compatible computer with a 68020 or higher processor, a math co-processor, and a color monitor. At the time of publication, this would include the Mac II, IIx, IIcx, IIfx, IIci, IIsi (with coprocessor), any Mac Quadra, and the Mac LC or LC II with a math coprocessor installed. Note that MacVISTA is an image analysis program. It assumes you already have images to work with: MacVISTA was not designed to operate the hardware which gathers the image data itself. That must be done by whatever software came with the particular piece of imaging hardware. However, once you have the image data stored as a file on disk, MacVISTA can read, display, and help you analyze it. Finally, please note that MacVISTA is a shareware program. The author of MacVISTA is a student at M.I.T. who (like most college students) could use every extra bit of cash that rolls in. Feel free to distribute copies of MacVISTA to anyone you want, but if you or your institution regularly use MacVISTA, please send cash, a check, or a money order for $20.00 (US) to the author at the address listed on the cover of this document. For that reason, it’s also probably a good idea to copy this manual when distributing copies of MacVISTA. Your shareware donation will not only help pay my tuition, but also make you eligible to recieve a copy of MacVISTA 2.0 when it is completed. (Features under development in version 2.0 include true color reconstruction, image convolution and deconvolution, contour and surface plots, and more...) MacVISTA FILES MacVISTA reads FITS files. The FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) format, widely adopted as a standard in the astronomical community, is a very straightforward way of storing image data. The specifications for FITS format detailed below should allow you to convert images obtained on your own hardware to a format MacVISTA can understand. FITS files have two parts— the image header, and da…