FITS-WCS and related software

Several implementations of the FITS WCS standards are available:

• The WCSLIB software distribution (i.e. this library) may be obtained from http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~mcalabre/WCS/. The remainder of this manual describes its use.

• wcstools, developed by Doug Mink, may be obtained from http://tdc-www.harvard.edu/software/wcstools/.

• AST, developed by David Berry within the U.K. Starlink project, http://www.starlink.ac.uk/ast/ and now supported by JAC, Hawaii http://starlink.jach.hawaii.edu/starlink/.

A useful utility for experimenting with FITS WCS descriptions is also provided; go to the above site and then look at the section entitled "FITS-WCS Plotting Demo".

Python wrappers to WCSLIB are provided by

• The Kapteyn Package http://www.astro.rug.nl/software/kapteyn/ by Hans Terlouw and Martin Vogelaar.

• pywcs, http://stsdas.stsci.edu/astrolib/pywcs/ by Michael Droettboom.

Java is supported via

• CADC/CCDA Java Native Interface (JNI) bindings to WCSLIB 4.2 http://www.cadc-ccda.hia-iha.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/cadc/source/ by Patrick Dowler.

Recommended WCS-aware FITS image viewers:

• Bill Joye's DS9 (http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD/ds9/), and

• Fv by Pan Chai (http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftools/fv/)

both handle 2-D images.

Currently (2009/09/08) I know of no image viewers that handle 1-D spectra properly nor multi-dimensional data, not even multi-dimensional data with only two non-degenerate image axes (please inform me if you know otherwise).

Pre-built WCSLIB packages are available, generally a little behind the main release (this list will probably be out-of-date by the time you read it, best do a web search):

• Fedora (RPM), https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/wcslib

• Fresh Ports (RPM), http://www.freshports.org/astro/wcslib/

• Gentoo, http://packages.gentoo.org/package/sci-astronomy/wcslib

• RPM (general) http://v2.www.rpmseek.com/cat/Libraries.html?hl=com&cx=591:W

Bill Pence's general FITS IO library, CFITSIO is available from http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/fitsio/. It is used optionally by some of the high-level WCSLIB test programs and is required by two of the utility programs.

PGPLOT, Tim Pearson's Fortran plotting package on which PGSBOX is based, also used by some of the WCSLIB self-test suite and a utility program, is available from http://astro.caltech.edu/~tjp/pgplot/.

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