excellent new FITS image viewer

[Stupendous Man <richmond@a188-l009.rit.edu>]

  I just heard about the latest release from the SAO/HEAD group
(that's "Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory/High Energy Astronomy
Division", for the acronomically-challenged): DS9 is a program
which can read and display both FITS images and FITS binary tables.
It is standalone application (based on TCL/Tk, but one doesn't need
TCL/Tk to run the binaries) which runs on many platforms.  
You can find it at:

            http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD/ds9/

  I downloaded the self-extracting archive to a local Windows
machine, extracted the program, and ran it without a hitch.  
It provides some _very_ nice tools -- I especially like the 
horizontal/vertical slicer.

  Mike-Bob says check it out.

                                             Michael Richmond