Actually I had been investigating using Python for Tom’s
software challenge. In the process I ended up in touch with Paul
Barrett (STSI) who says that a Python
module to read FITS data will be available in November for testing. The advantage being that the software
would no longer be OS dependent. There
is also an image processing library available called PIL. For those interested trying out Python
the best sites would be http://www.activestate.com
for windows http://www.python.org and http://www.pythonware.com
for *nix versions.
Tom had also asked about IRAF help. I found this http://www.dfanning.com/documents/tips.html#Contents
which may prove helpful. Maybe someone else already knows about it.
Bill OConnor