news from the IRAF folks...

[Chris Albertson <chrisalbertson90278@yahoo.com>]

Two developments I just found out about.  This will be old news
for some.

1) "Pyraf".  It appears that IRAF will leave the 1980's and
   make a jump clean into this century.

   Quoted from http://pyraf.stsci.edu/

    "PyRAF is a new command language for IRAF based on
     the Python scripting language. It is useful both for
     interactive data analysis and for writing analysis
     scripts. PyRAF coexists with the current IRAF CL;...."

2) Support for the Macintosh

   "...We are happy to report that with the upcoming
    V2.12 release ... we plan to support Mac OS X..."

See http://iraf.noao.edu/macport.html for the full text.

This means that people not wanting to invest in a UNIX
workstation from Sun, or DEC, or install Linux on a PC can
run IRAF on a plain off the shelf box that can be bought
retail.  In fact I would I'll go farther and say that the
best computer in terms of price, power, and ease of use
for astronomical data reduction will be the Apple dual CPU
G4 Macintosh. 

The PC still wins in terms of cost for those willing to
build a system and come up a steep learning curve and
the Sun Starfire 15000 (see
http://www.sun.com/servers/highend/sunfire15k/ )
wins in terms of raw power.  But the G4 Mac 
(see http://www.apple.com/powermac/ )is an off the self
consumer level product that comes with a pre configured OS
and should be able to run IRAF and MS Office together on
the same screen, somethingnoother platform can claim.




=====
Chris Albertson 
  Home:   310-376-1029  chrisalbertson90278@yahoo.com
  Cell:   310-990-7550
  Office: 310-336-5189  Christopher.J.Albertson@aero.org

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