Data Last Night

[Tom Droege <tdroege@veriomail.com>]

I took three disks of data last night with the WCS header stuff working.  I 
can now bring up one of these files with DS9 and the cursor is within less 
than 1/2 degree of the proper position.  This for both cameras.  The lenses 
are mounted in the old lens plates on TOM so they are not very well 
aligned.  I plan to just live with this alignment until I get TOM2 and TOM3 
assembled and running.

It is now easy to identify star fields.  I can just bring up an image, put 
the cursor on a moderately bright star, then go to Uranometria 2000 and 
pick off the position.

One thing I notice.  DS9 seems to be very slow reading images off the 
CD.  It seems a little faster reading them from hard drive.  DS9 seems an 
order of magnitude slower than Image Scientist reading 8 MByte files.  It 
also seems to go back to the CD when you move the cursor.  This makes it 
maddingly slow for someone used to Image Scientist.  On the other hand, it 
reads the WCS, while IS strips off the WCS parameters when processing an 
image.  So I can't process an image with IS and look at it with 
DS9.  Pity!  I suppose IRAF solves all these problems.  I will have to 
learn to use it.

Tom Droege