AstroImageJ Release Notes

AstroImageJ is open-source software and is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Version 5.5.1.00 (with ImageJ 1.54m1 and Java 24) (05/07/2025)

· Bug Fixes

· Fixed a problem with drag and drop of saved apertures files

· New Features

· Multi-Aperture > File > ‘Save data subset to file’ now supports outputting full JD-related data in all data columns. Previously, outputting any time-related column (containing JD in the label), other than in the first (leftmost) column would subtract the integer value for purposes of detrending and avoiding fitting the large JD numbers. To now output the fractional version of the JD number, select the version of the time column label in the dropdown mention that is prefixed with ‘F’ (for fractional). For example, to output the decimal part of BJD_UTC, select FBJD_UTC in the dropdown menu.

· Multi-Aperture > File > ‘Save data subset to file’ now allows the user to define custom constant column values and column label names for output in the data subset file. For example, to output a column labelled ‘Target’ with the value ‘Sirius’, open ‘Save data subset to file’, select the ‘Constant Col’ button at the bottom and define the label, value pairs that you desire to output. Click Okay to return to the Save Data Subset main panel. Then select the desired label names in the dropdown menus in the order that you want them in the output file.

Version 5.5.0.00 (with ImageJ 1.54m1 and Java 24) (04/29/2025)

· New Features

· Multi-aperture now provides an elliptical aperture option that may improve photometry for non-circular PFSs (such as from poor tracking or guiding)

· Multi-aperture now provides an option for the T1 aperture to track a moving object, such as an asteroid. The user identifies the object in the first image of the stack and then the last image of the stack. AIJ then assumes linear movement in time. If images are plate-solved, the object will be tracked according to movement in RA and Dec (required for images sequences that have large shifts of the field on the detector from image to image or that have a meridian flip). T1 objects can be tracked in X,Y space as well, but the placement of the field on the detector from image to image will need to be less than the radius of the photometric aperture in use.

· General

· Add a function to get measurements table name for use in programmable plot titling

· Added better handling of folder opening when no valid images are found

· Added additional error logging of exceptions to aij.log (for troubleshooting purposes)

· Double-click of the new unified fits.fz table file that can contain all of measurements table, plotcfg, and apertures information in a single file, now opens all saved components into AIJ by default. A list of the loaded components is briefly displayed as they open in to AIJ.

· Multi-Aperture

· Support for elliptical aperture shapes

· Support for tracking moving targets

· Implements multi-threaded photometry

· No longer runs auto-comp after multi-aperture is cancelled using ESCAPE

· Multi-Plot

· Ref star panel and image overlays now display the average magnitude value from the stack rather than just a single image

· Fixed problem with optimization when using data trimming

· Fixed a problem with the transit model display persisting between changes in the fit mode

· Measurements table

· Added support for renaming data column header labels

· Fixed a bug that prevented the table display from properly updating

Version 5.4.2.00 (with ImageJ 1.54h2 and Java 23) (02/05/2025)

· General

· Attempt to fix bug that may cause preferences to become corrupted.

· Open Image Sequence

· Avoids a problem with recursive zip file reading.

· Multi-Plot

· Fixed problem with table merging

· Fits Header Edit

· Fixed bug that terminated a value string prematurely when a single quote was part of the string.

Version 5.4.1.00 (with ImageJ 1.54h2 and Java 23) (01/16/2025)

· General

· Mac installation package now uses native Mac launcher to attempt to work around shutdown / fail to start up issues.

· Image Display

· Fixed crop image bug.

· Fitting / Detrending

· Fixed two issues that caused certain detrend-only modes to not fit correctly.

· Changed limit on transit depth to <0 rather than <=0.

· Fixed a slight offset in degree of freedom determination for NelderMead detrending.

· In multi-plot Y-data, fixed the detrend factor display to correctly show new fitted value after every detrend.

Version 5.4.0.00 (with ImageJ 1.54h2 and Java 23) (12/12/2024)

· New Features

· (Beta) Multi-aperture “Freeform” apertures mode (see more below).

· Support of saving the measurements table, plotcfg, and apertures file all within a unified fits.fz table file that contains all three. The file is also compressed to save space. The downside is that these files will be more complicated to manipulate outside of AIJ and python. Text-based tab-delimited measurements tables will continue to be supported for ease of use by third parties.

· Support of opening general fits table files, such as Kepler, TESS SPOC or QLP lightcurve files from MAST.

· Fits.fz measurements table saving (see more below).

· New MeasurementsTable math operations in table display (see more below).

· Columns of data in measurements table can now fitted to curves.

· General Fixes

· Fixed various exceptions and lockup modes.

· Various fixes to automatic plot titling.

· Bug fix to "Open plot configuration from file" now allows selected file to be opened.

· AAVSO Macros

· Update AAVSO Exoplanet Format Macro to v7.7 (thanks to Dennis Conti).

· Multi-Aperture

· (Beta) Multi-aperture “Freeform” apertures mode allows the user to define the aperture’s shape by interactively identifying the pixels to include in each aperture. This mode is primarily intended for extracting lightcurves from space-based images (e.g. TESS) where guiding is extremely precise. The new mode also supports centroiding and relative photometry via references star, so can also be used with ground-based data, but is more tedious to use (due to the flexibility) than circular apertures.

· Autocomps now uses slider to select trade-off below proximity and brightness.

· FITS file handling

· Fixed a problem with BJD timestamps for TESS TICA FFI images.

· Updates to underlying FITS handling code (nom.tam.fits).

· Fixed opening of some 3D fits images that opened as an incorrect number of images.

· Add stack folder saving options.

· Fix to open only SCI HDU in multi-HDU fits images.

· LINUX

· Update linux launch script to handle spaces in paths.

· Fix logging window display for certain Linux distributions.

· Fix image display for certain Linux distributions (double-buffering issue).

· Fitting Panels

· Fit Panel data cleaning user interface is now more explicit as to the cleaning mode that is selected. Also, the thresholds for each mode are now started independently.

· Changed transit fitter to use built-in ImageJ amoeba (Nelder–Mead) routine.

· BIC is now calculated even with no transit model and no detrending.

· Fixed a problem where deleting many table rows took a very long time.

· MeasurementsTable Display

· Option added for filtering out rows with NaN, Inf, and Fin values.

· Math can now be implemented on columns of data and to optionally produce new columns of data.

· Added options to add and delete columns of data.

· Row insertion and row label editing now supported.

· Columns of data in measurements table can now fitted to curves.

· Astrometry

· Updated timeouts to accommodate long queues at astrometry.net server.

· Improved interactions with astrometry.net to improve per image solve time in some cases.

· Plotting

· Now shows the number of data points that have been removed since the measurements table was created.

· Use alt-left-drag in plot image to zoom. Roll mouse wheel to zoom in x and y. Scroll+Alt/Opt to zoom in y only. Scroll+Ctrl/Cmd to Zoom in x only. See new help button on plot for more options and details.

Version 5.3.4.02 (with ImageJ 1.54h2 and Java 21) (04/07/2024)

· Multi-plot

· Fixed a bug that causes scripted titling to not work when using a virtual stack and then clearing some data point.

· Fixed a problem where impact parameter, b, lock does not get recalled when reopening a plotcfg file.

· Tweaked naming of some Multi-plot Main > File menu items

Version 5.3.4.00 (with ImageJ 1.54h2 and Java 21) (04/04/2024)

· Multi-plot

· Improved Cleaning “Undo” icon in fitting panels

· Fits Reader

· Now reads 16 bit scaled images fits images correctly (i.e. BITPIX=16, BZERO ≠ 32768, BSCALE ≠1)

· Measurements Table

· Improved table reading speed

Version 5.3.3.00 (with ImageJ 1.54h2 and Java 21) (03/27/2024)

· Significant new features

· Improvements in phase-folding for TESS data analysis.

· Updated Java JRE for new installs to address security issue in Linux OS. Note, installing a new installation package is required to update the JRE version. Using the AIJ update function will not update the JRE and will this not solve the Linux OS vulnerability.

· Measurements tables, and optionally associated plotcfg and apertures files can be saved in a single compressed fits table file to save space and simplify file management. However, the default is still to save to independent delimited text files that can be opened in standard spreadsheet and text editing programs.

· Transit models are now variably sampled which ensures at least three points in transit for very long TESS sequences, and improves model rendering time in general by reducing sampling when not needed for display purposes.

· AIJ now allows images of different sizes to be loaded into a stack by cropping or filling all subsequent images to be the size of the first image. A log message will be displayed to warn that cropping has been implemented. This feature is useful for processing survey images that may not all be of the same dimensions.

· All current Multi-aperture settings are now saved in .apertures files.

· General

· Fixed certain icons that didn’t render properly on Mac.

· When dragging and dropping a folder of images on the AIJ Toolbar, the import image sequence panel can be bypassed by holding the Control Key while dragging (i.e. will open all images in the folder).

· Multi-Aperture

· Set-up panel now displays better on low resolution displays.

· Removed an unintended pause before starting photometry run.

· Fixed T1 aperture not showing in specific cases.

· Fixed single step mode not allowing placement of apertures.

· Fixed a bug that allowed two multi-aperture runs to start while auto aperture measurements were running.

· Multi-plot

· Fixed vMarker2 not updating when phased transit duration is updated.

· Plot cursor x-coordinate no shows full time, no just fractional time.

· Fixed a problem with transit fitting when all model parameters are locked.

· Added a zoom indicator to upper-left of plot when zoomed in.

· Allow spline fitting masking of data using Left trim and Right Trim settings.

· Improved plot rendering time by minimizing unnecessary duplication of calculations.

· Phase folding in units of phase and hours since Tc are current disabled because transit fitting does not work properly in those modes. We will revisit later if these modes are needed by the community.

· Improved plot rendering time by introducing multi-threading.

· Fixed an NPE when resizing png files.

· Fixed an NPE caused by certain binned data.

· Plot zooming and panning performance significantly improved for long datasets such as from multi-sector TESS.

· Properly constrain inclination in transit model.

· Color Image Processing

· Fix virtual stack debayering problem caused by reading header value from wrong image slice.

Version 5.3.2.00 (with ImageJ 1.54h2 and Java 21) (01/08/2024)

· General

· Added Windows, Mac, and Linux fresh install packages. AIJ may now be installed in the Program Files folder, and file type associations can be selected at installation.

· Fixed manual AIJ memory setting running under Mac.

· Move to universal mac startup (noted for development purposes).

· Added Mac Codesign and notarization to IDE/gradle builds (noted for development purposes).

· Measurements Table

· 5.3.0.01: Fix table column display issue

·

· Multi-plot

· 5.3.2.00: Fixed data cleaning exception.

· 5.3.2.00: Added support for double-click to open plotcfg, aperture, and radec files.

· 5.3.2.00: Fixed spline fit transit masking (trimmed data masking still sometimes causes spline fitting to fail to converge in phase folding mode).

· 5.3.2.00: Fixed slow update of reference stars in ref star panel.

· 5.3.1.00: Allow cut and paste in new plot title boxes on Mac with either command or control.

· 5.3.1.00: Allow detrend optimization when no apertures are populated in measurements table.

· 5.3.1.01: Initial impact parameter b to handle older plotcfg files.

· 5.3.0.01: Correct order of legend drawing.

· 5.3.1.00: Fix bug with ref star panel when no aperture in measurement table.

Version 5.3.0.00 (with ImageJ 1.54h2 and Java 18)
(12/18/2023)

· Significant new features

· Introduces programmable plot titling from FITS headers, filenames, and measurements tables (see help in Multi-plot Main).

· Introduces arrow symbols on plot to indicate when data points are off the plot (can be disabled in MP Main X and Y settings).

· Introduces a new implementation of measurements table to speed processing and provide search/copy/paste/goto functions etc.

· Corrected compressed FITS writing (FPACK) and added compression presets and custom compression setting capability.

· Fixed Multi-Aperture and other settings panel number editing.

· Update to ImageJ 1.54h2.

· General

· 5.3.0.00: Added Option to allow disabling of beeps.

· 5.2.1.04: fixed erroneous error message when trying to close an image

· 5.2.1.04: more macro bug fixes

· 5.2.1.01: Fixed problem with double-click on measurements table to open into AIJ

· Measurements Table

· 5.3.0.00: Fixed measurements table access null pointer exceptions (NPEs).

· 5.2.1.03: Color label and slice columns cells when linearity or saturation flagged

· 5.2.1.02: Fixed spacing of measurements table when font size is changed.

· 5.2.1.01: New implementation of measurements table

1. Provides much faster performance that will enable future development of new features that require larger measurements tables (e.g. multiple aperture sizes per run)

2. Allows access to individual cells directly

3. Provides column sorting (right-click on column header name, for example, right-click on JD_UTC to sort data according to time)

4. Provides table filtering capability (e.g. select all saturated exposures when can then be deleted from the table and plot if desired)

5. Provides table display sorting (left-click on column name) and filtering without updating the underlying table data and plot

6. Provides column name filtering to show specific columns (e.g. JD_UTC|AIRMASS|rel_flux_T1 with regex enabled)

7. Provides a column name “Go to” function to jump to a desired column name (and row if specified)

8. Linearity and saturation warnings are now optionally flagged in individual table cells using yellow and red backgrounds, respective. The flags are on a per-aperture level.

· Multi-Aperture

· 5.3.0.00: Fixed initialization of impact parameter (b) setting when loading plotcfgs from before the b setting was implemented.

· 5.3.0.00: Provide for bulk setting of reference star changes and MT update.

· 5.3.0.00: Fixed spline smoothing normalization to use division instead of subtraction

· 5.2.1.02: Fixed erroneous beep after “Place Apertures” click.

· 5.2.1.01: Fixed a bug that caused multi-aperture to not pick up the WCS solution if stating multi-aperture with a slice displayed that does not have a WCS solution, even if the first slice to be processed does have a WCS solution.

· 5.2.1.01: Fixed a bug which caused the Multi-plot windows to open twice when a new measurements table is loaded.

· Data Processor

· 5.2.1.01: Now properly handles fits.fz filetypes in the input fields.

· 5.2.1.01: When multi-aperture is enabled as part of DP, the multi-aperture will change to “Use previous N apertures” after first image is processed.

· Multi-Plot

· 5.3.0.00: During data subset output, only flag MF if it the checkbox is eneabled.

· 5.3.0.00: During data subset output, prepend ‘F’ to fraction timing columns.

· 5.3.0.00 Transit model plot datapoint density changes according to zoom.

· 5.3.0.00: Added plot title programmability (see help in Multi-plot Main).

· 5.3.0.00: Plots can be resized by drag and drop of the plot edges.

· 5.2.1.01: Fixed spine fit to fit new measurements table values if already enabled before multi-aperture run.

· 5.2.1.01: When “Fixed apertures from multi images” mode is enabled, the slice indicator scroll bar now updates (the bug happened with place apertures by RA/Dec selected).

Version 5.2.1.00 (with ImageJ 1.53k and Java 18)
(8/08/2023)

· General

· 5.2.0.17: fixed problems with Multi-Aperture when running under Data Processor (variable aperture and centroiding)

· 5.2.0.17: On Macs, either <Control> or <Command> c, x, v can be used to copy, cut, and paste into dialog boxes.

· 5.2.0.17: plot zooming using the trackpad now works smoothly

· 5.2.0.17: stacks with different image zooms are cropped and filled to the same size as the first image in the stack (e.g. ZTF images)

· 5.2.0.17: New plot zoom modes, scroll/trackpad zoom action zooms in both X- and Y-axis, <control/command>-scroll zooms in X-axis only, <alt/option>-scroll zooms in Y-axis only, <alt/option>-drag in plot drags a zoom-box to define the zoom region. New HELP button in plot windows defines all the plot-mouse-keyboard actions.

· 5.2.0.17: new aperture options added “Place all new apertures”, “Place first previously used aperture”, “Place N previously used apertures”, and “Place N imported apertures”

· 5.2.0.17: update WCS and NAXIS of debayered images

· 5.2.0.17: add color code to debayered images

· 5.2.0.17: on Mac, files now associated with AIJ (such as .tbl) can be double-clicked to open them into AIJ and Multi-plot

· 5.2.0.16: Significant performance improvements to file opening, photometry, and measurements table handling.

· 5.2.0.15: Fixer error message when opening TESScut TICA FFIs.

· 5.2.0.15: Measurements table support precision beyond 6 decimal places.

· 5.2.0.14: AIJ now ignores a trailing dot at the end of an integer in fits header values

· 5.2.0.13: Added macro and macro recorder support to Multi-Aperture and Stack Aligner (for new genericswingdialog windows)

· Macros

· 5.2.0.17: Fixed another memory leak issue

· 5.2.0.16: Fixed memory leak issue

· 5.2.0.16: Fixed hang issues

· 5.2.0.16: Added flags for data processor, multi-aperture, and stack aligner completion

· 5.2.0.16: Multi-aperture “automode” now disabled for Stack Aligner runs

· Astrometry

· Bug fixed that caused many timeouts when communicating with astrometry.net

· Data Processor

· Fixed handling of compressed image names such as fits.fz

· Multi-aperture

· 5.2.0.17: new aperture options added “Place all new apertures”, “Place first previously used aperture”, “Place N previously used apertures”, and “Place N imported apertures”

· Handle SHUTOPEN keyword for timing extraction (e.g. ZTF images)

· New “Update image display while running” option can be disabled to significantly speed up Multi-Aperture runs. The downside is that the images can no longer be seen as photometry runs.

· Multiplot

· 5.2.0.17: New plot zoom modes, scroll zooms in both X- and Y-axis, <control/command>-scroll zooms in X-axis only, <alt/option>-scroll zooms in Y-axis only, <alt/option>-drag in plot drags a zoom-box to define the zoom region. New HELP button in plot windows defines all the plot-mouse-keyboard actions.

· 5.2.0.17: Detrend and comp optimization now work when smoothing is enabled.

· 5.2.0.17: Binning can now show both the binned symbols and unbinned symbols, or just the unbinned symbols (through use of tri-state checkbox)

· 5.2.0.17: Drawing of binned error bars now available on per lightcurve basis

· 5.2.0.17: Unbinned error bars are now just a straight line. Binned error bars still have top and bottom horizontal lines.

· 5.2.0.17: unbinned transparent color data are now hidden when binned symbols are enabled

· 5.2.0.17: smoothing panel improvements

· 5.2.0.17: operators are now selected using pop-up window and icons

· 5.2.0.17: New “multi-state” check boxes in Y-data panel save horizontal space

· 5.2.0.17: using custom error no longer forces the display of error bars (use “show error” to do so)

· 5.2.0.16: When binned symbols are shown, the unbinned symbols show in a fainter version of the same color instead of always in grey

· 5.2.0.16: new “Quick” comp star optimization option (allows optimization of large numbers of comp stars, but may not find the exact lowest RMS)

· 5.2.0.16: Default TESS data smoothing changed to fixed with a knot spacing of 4 times transit duration

· 5.2.0.16: Any FITS table can now be opened as a measurements table (including TESS SPOC light curve files)

· 5.2.0.16: Data binning now happens incrementally instead of after data points are put into bins (to handle long TESS sequences)

· 5.2.0.13: Merged point deletion in plots (<shift> left- and right-click) with cleaning buffering and undo functions in fitting panel.

· 5.2.0.11: Fixed MP > File > Open plotcfg from file

· 5.2.0.11: Fixed plotcfg open null pointer exception

· Fixed problem with Out Binning when phase folding (filtering of NaNs)

· Added control in MP > Style to allow output of binned error bars

· 5.2.0.10: Fixed laying in PDF image: transit model over binned data over unbinned data.

· 5.2.0.08: Fixed a problem with data symbol and transit model placement in PDF files.

· 5.2.0.08: Fixed an exception that caused the Multi-Plot Y-data panel to empty after changes the number of Y-datasets or the number of detrend parameters.

· 5.2.0.08: Added “Style” option to allow disabling the display of AIJ version number on plot window. Please keep the version number displayed for AIJ general use for traceability of results. This option may be needed when producing PDF files for publication.

· 5.2.0.07: Added “KeplerSpline” smoothing for long time-series such as from TESS. This smoothing is intended for removing long-term stellar variations from TESS light curves rather than for detrending ground-based data. The smoothing happens before the fit, and not jointly with the fit as with AIJ standard detrending.

· Lightcurve fitting now allows Tc to be negative to support phase folded plotting.

· Change default Tc fitting stepsize from 15 minutes to 1 hour, which encourages AIJ to check from transit centers further from the specificied midpoint of “left” and “right”.

· Added a “Period Sync” checkbox in the multi-plot main phase folding panel. When enabled, the orbital period specified in the phase folding panel is copied to all enabled fitting panels.

· Adds new Style menu that will eventually allow various plot style setting (font sizes, symbol sizes, etc.). Currently, only changes to the dot symbol size, binned dot symbol size, and bolded dot symbol size (when mouse cursor is over a symbol in the plot) are available.

· Stack Aligner

· Bug fix to prevent loss of header information

· FITS Handling

· 5.2.0.17: more updates to fits handling

· 5.2.0.17: fixed writing of fpacked integer fits files

· 5.2.0.17: TPC WCS coordinate system now handled (by ignoring distortion corrections) (e.g. ZTF images)

· 5.2.0.12 Updates to fits reading and writing (update to nom.tam.fits 1.18.0) to correct compression/decompressions differences relative to fpack/funpack utilities.

· 5.2.0.11 Initial fixes to handle TICA FFIs

· Image Display

· 5.2.0.17: The new capability introduced in 5.2.0.08 “Added options to save a new single aperture position for use with the multi-aperture “previous aperture” option. To use, type or paste an RA and Dec into either RA or Dec above an image and press <Shift><Enter> to save a centroided T1 aperture, or press <Control><Enter> to save a non-centroided T1 aperture. Just press <Enter> to only save the location identification in the image overlay (as before)” now adds an aperture representation in image overlay to indicated centroid or not.

· 5.2.0.10: Fixed NEB check macro startup from Image Display

· 5.2.0.09: Changed “plot of pixel values at mouse cursor from all slices” keyboard control to require both <Shift> and <Control> be held.

· 5.2.0.09: The “plot of pixel values” PDF plotting now works.

· 5.2.0.08: Added option to show a plot of pixel values at mouse cursor from all slices when menu option is enabled or the <Control> key is held while moving mouse.

· 5.2.0.08 : Added options to save a new single aperture position for use with the multi-aperture “previous aperture” option. To use, type or paste an RA and Dec into either RA or Dec above an image and press <Shift><Enter> to save a centroided T1 aperture, or press <Control><Enter> to save a non-centroided T1 aperture. Just press <Enter> to only save the location identification in the image overlay (as before).

· 5.2.0.05: Corrected problem with fixed contrast mode not staying at the same contrast level.

· Stack combiner

· Fixes a bug with how numeric values were written to the updated headers. The bug caused headers to not show when opened in other programs or re-opened in AIJ.

· Fix a bug that caused fits headers not to update when using a median stack combine.

· Debayer

· 5.2.0.17: update WCS and NAXIS of debayered images

· 5.2.0.17: add color code to debayered images

· Add new option for Luminance image creation [ R + B + ½(G1+G2) ]. The original version R + B +G1 +G2 is still available.

· 5.2.0.06: Debayer in virtual stack mode would previously keep copy of debayered images in memory, so could still hit a memory limit and crash. This has now been fixed and should allow any number of images to be debayered in virtual stack mode, without limits from available physical memory.

· Coordinate Converter

· Now hides warning messages when leap second update connection failures occur

· AIJ Update

· 5.2.0.06: AstroImageJ.exe is now only downloaded under Windows (not under Mac or Linux). Even though it downloaded for Mac and Linux before (and could cause user confusion), it was not saved to disk, so was benign.

· Image Display

· 5.2.0.05: Corrected problem with fixed contrast mode not staying at the same contrast level.

· NEBcheck process

· 5.2.0.11: remove debug line ("TARGET disp: XXX") seen in the log file output

· 5.2.0.07: Multiple measurementsTables processing now also selects T1 aperture.

· 5.2.0.04: Faster copy of best results.

· 5.2.0.03: Attempts to fix NEBcheck not outputting logs until the end.

· 5.2.0.02: Adds macro number in window title, fixes NEB table naming to match ExoFOP upload script, and turns off log output if checkbox on setup panel is disabled.

· 5.2.0.01: Now handles detrended data columns that are saved in the measurements table(s).

· 5.2.0.01: Added timestamps to log messages.

· 5.2.0.01: Removed request for OK from user to start merging multiple table results. Added a merge progress progress bar.

· 5.2.0.01: Supports checking for Txx/Cxx changes between different measurements tables.

· 5.2.0.01: Accommodates multiple tables in the same folder by placing the results folder in the same folder. Otherwise, the results are placed in the parent folder of the first measurements table.

· 5.2.0.01: Simplified user dialog asking if more files are to be processed.

Version 5.2.0.00 (with ImageJ 1.53k and Java 18)
(Last Updated: 12/07/2022)

· NEBcheck process

· Now supports sorting the best results from multiple AIJ runs using different aperture sizes and selected the best result from all apertures for the merged results. (Many, many thanks to Dennis Conti and Bob Massey of the AAVSO for designing, developing, and test this new significant feature.)

· Fits Writer

· Fixed a bug that causes AIJ’s fpack written files to only be readable by AIJ.

· FPACK (.fz) compression temporarily reverted to lossless fpacking. The previous compression settings were too lossy. We will later revert to a compressed version that matches LCOGT compression.

· General

· It AstroImageJ.cfg does not exist, it is created when a memory change is specified in Toolbar > Edit > Options > Memory & Threads

· Fixed a null pointer error that was reported when a memory change was attempted and AstroImageg.cfg file existed.

· Data Processor

· Bias, Dark, and Flat master files may now be compressed independent of the science files by using .fits, .fits,fz, .fits.gz, or .fits.fz.gz suffixes in the file name box.

· FITS header editor

· Provides a new “Track Slice” option that causes the editor contents to update when the slice displayed is changed in the stack.

· Astrometry/Plate-Solve

· Now defaults to same compression format as the originally opened file.

· Astrometry now overwrites initial image by default, event for compressed images, if auto-save is enabled. Different compression formats can be selected on the astrometry set-up panel instead.

· Now offers option to save in compressed formats (FPACK and/or GZIP). Use must select the same format as the input files to overwrite the file on disk. A later improvement will allow AIJ to select the same settings as the input file by default.

· Fix file writing that was defaulting all uncompressed fits files to .fits extension.

· Stack combiner (ZProjection)

· Now creates new fits headers appropriate to the combined slices (contributed by Bill Tschumy)

· Multi-plot

· Bug fix - Y-data panel missing values in GUI if Preferences > “Open Y-data panel at startup” is not enabled, and then the Y-data panel is later opened.

· Multi-Aperture

· Fix a problem that caused the base aperture sizes to be changed when auto fixed and variable aperture modes were used.

· Fixed an optimizer problem that occurred when the “Left Trim” option was used.

· A color “transparent” was added to allow plotting a transit model while suppressing the plot of the underlying data.

· Multi-aperture option “Auto Fixed apertures from multi-image T1 radial profiles” has an updated algorithm that results in a larger auto-radius.

· Multi-aperture option “Auto Fixed apertures from multi-image T1 radial profiles” allows radial profile/WCS failures and continues to derive auto-aperture based on the remaining images.

· Fixed a memory leak problem that occurred with virtual stacks when combined with “use prev” and “ra/dec” settings.

· Multi-aperture option “Auto Fixed apertures from multi-image T1 radial profiles” now shows stack slider progressing when MA runs.

· Folder Opener

· Now shows a warning if no images are available in the specified folder.

· Stack Aligner

· Now respects the More Aperture Settings option that indicates that the first slice should be user as the starting slice, no matter what slice was showing when Stack Aligner was launched.

· FITS Reader

· Now supports multiHDU images produced by Pixinsight

· Now maintains full file suffixes, including compression type to allow saving to those compression formats by default.

Version 5.1.3.00 (with ImageJ 1.53k and Java 18)
(Last Updated: 10/09/2022)

· Multiplot

· All plots now offer a “Copy” button to allow copying the plot image to the OS’s copy and paste buffer for ease of pasting images into other applications.

· Fixed dot symbol size in pdf output files

· Comp star optimizer now ignores cases where RMS <=0

· Folder opener now sets AIJ to default to the same folder for writing reduced data files

· Fixed a specific case where certain plotcfg files would fail to load (especially on Mac)

· Fixed a bug which caused a multi-plot error (and lock-up) when updating plot during a multi-aperture run

· Multi-aperture

· Fixed a bug that caused an IndexOutOfBounds error for stack radii

· Fixed case where multi-aperture and stack-aligner allowed “use previous apertures” even if no previous apertures had been defined.

· FITS handling

· Multi-plot > File menu and DP now offer fpack and gz compression when writing single images and 3D fits files.

· Fixed a bug where improperly formatted LCOGT images would cause an extra image in the stack.

Version 5.1.2.00 (with ImageJ 1.53k and Java 18)
(Last Updated: 9/20/2022)

· Critical bug fix

· Fixed plot not updating when comp star optimization finishes

· Multiplot

· When optimizer is cancelled, it now returns to the starting state.

· FITS handling

· 3D FITS fpack compression added

· Now opens fpack compressed multi-HDU FITS files

Version 5.1.1.00 (with ImageJ 1.53k and Java 18)
(Last Updated: 9/17/2022)

· General

· On MacOS, “command Q” and toolbar menu item “Quit” now save the preferences to disk before AIJ closes.

· Multiplot

· File menu now offers an option to produce an AAVSO variable star report (thank you Dennis Conti!) (see link on set-up panel for instructions)

· Detrend columns with all NaNs are now flagged in the fitting panel if selected

· Optimization now ignores all NaN columns (previsouly they caused an incorrect optimization)

· Fixed a detrend optimization bug caused by specific BIC initial condition.

· Updating of comp star and detrend settings after optimization more efficient (only one table and/or plot update required after each optimization).

· FITS support

· Fits files (except 3D fits files) can now be written in compressed FPACK (.fz) format (and optionally with gzip compression as well). Previously, only FPACK files could be opened.

· AIJ now opens gzipped + fpacked fits files when named *.fz.gz.

· Update nom.tam to 1.17.0 within annotate keyword support overlaid.

· Data Processor

· Fixed a problem where invalid path names in DP on a Mac could cause an exception and resulting in the file opener icons to be inoperable.

Version 5.1.1.00 (with ImageJ 1.53k and Java 18)
(Last Updated: 8/11/2022)

· Fitting Panel

· All light curves now updated after an optimization operation completes

· FITS File I/O

· AIJ now removes NAXIS entry when a 3D fits stack has been opened and then saved as individual images

· Multi-Plot

· The location of the seeing profile image stack that gets created when using a variable aperture is now recalled correctly from session to session.

· Multi-Aperture

· Now saves target and ref star designations when finished so that the “Recall” button on the Reference Star panel will restore the initial settings (e.g. after a comp star optimization).

· FITS Header Editor

· Now allows keywords longer than 8 characters, although it violates FITS spec

· Seeing Profile Stack

· Multi-plot save-all option now allows saving of the summary image as a png, and/or the full seeing stack as a multi-image gif.

· New buttons under the seeing profile stack to save images as png or pdf, or the full stack as a multi-image pdf or gif.

· Aperture Settings – More Settings

· The option “Julian Date (J.D.-2400000)” has been renamed to “Time Stamps (JD_UTC, etc.)” since it controls multiple time stamps being written to the measurements table.

Version 5.1.0.00 (with ImageJ 1.53k and Java 18)
(Last Updated: 6/6/2022)

· Windows Display Scaling

· Now supported with new AstroImageJ.exe launcher. To install the new launcher, either install the new installation package from the website, or update to 5.1.0.00 (or later) twice.

· General

· AIJ notifies user when a new released build is available upon startup.

· Fixed image display maximization on multiple monitor systems.

· New installs now default to allow up to 75% of physical system usage, but can still be overridden from Toolbar options setting as before.

· Windows launcher will update as needed on windows systems.

· Changed default measurements table file type to .tbl.

· .tbl filetypes can now be set to open AIJ upon double-click (and .plotcfg if named with the same file prefix as the table file).

· Fixed export of fractional fps AVI files

· Added AIJ log file to capture stdout warnings and errors

· NEBcheck

· Changed max length of data from 3,000 to 10,000 photometric samples.

· FITS reading/writing

· Various new 3D FITS format reading supported (i.e. multi-image FITS files).

· 3D FITS format writing support (i.e. multi-image FITS files).

· Load image sequence now allows filtering on up to two fits header values.

· Fixed opening of 64-bit floating point fits images as rounded 32-bit float images.

· Allows opening of hanging HDUs generated by original FITS writer

· Color Image Debayer Support

1. Revised corrections to debayer pixel interpretations

2. Renamed debayer options

3. Support for 8 bit debayering

4. Fixed debayer not opening on missing keyword

5. Corrections to debayer pixel interpretations

· Fixed bug that caused fits writer to not write current slice

· Multi-plot

· Fixed but the caused the plot to not update under certain conditions when the comp star ensemble is changed in the Reference Star panel.

· Fixed save data subset handling of long data column names.

· Fixed output binning corner-case problem.

· Fixed optimization bug where some threads remained open

· Fix for radec export when Multi-Aperture has not been executed

· Transit fitting bug corrected so that secondary transit location is not fitted with primary transit model

· Cleaning and optimization now allowed with transit model disabled

· Multi-Aperture

· Display panel layout has been changed to hopefully improve useability.

· Tooltips have been added to each option (hoover the mouse over the option to read the detailed note – wiggle mouse left and right over note to retain onscreen).

· Fixed variable aperture based on radial aperture usage (sometimes failed and defaulted to user settings)

· In radial profile variable aperture, a stack of radial profile images is created.

Version 5.0.3.00 (with ImageJ 1.53k)
(Last Updated: 3/4/2022)

Changes

· Multi-Plot

· Fixed binned RMS calculation for fitted curves

· Out Bin settings now saved to preferences

· Color Processing

· New Debayer mode has been corrected for FITS pixel ordering.

· New Debayer mode now supports ROWORDER, XBAYROFF, YBAYROFF

· New Debayer mode now offers options to limit the extraction to specific colors

· Multi-Aperture

· Aperture size pixel count and sky background pixel counts now recorded in measurements table correctly for all apertures.

Version 5.0.2.00 (with ImageJ 1.53k)
(Last Updated: 2/28/2022)

Changes

· Color Processing

· New Debayer mode that extracts 3 independent color stacks and a luminosity stack that sums all 4 pixels R, B, G, and G. In the G image, the two G pixels are averaged. Each image is ½ the size of the original in both X and Y.

· Compositor now runs channels again, as in IJ 1.47

· Fit Optimizer

· Standard data point cleaning (left-click on Clean) uses per-point photometric uncertainties to determine which points are removed from the dataset. This version adds support for model residual RMS cleaning by using shift-left-click on Clean, or a right-click on Clean (see Multi-Plot below).

· Multi-Plot

· Output data binning is implemented (which is true binning). The previous “Bin Size” option is now labeled Input Average, which is how it is implemented before data processing. The output binning is done after all processing and does not affect the detrending or light curve fitting.

· Added RMS cleaning using a shift-click or a right click on “Clean”

· Alt-left-click on Clean now cleans based on photometric uncertainty outliers (for cleaning obscured/clouded images)

· Fixed missing help files

· Transit fit lock-up bug fix

· Optimizer now works with “Use Transit Fit” disabled

· Multi-Aperture

· Improved set-up panel layout

· Fixed auto-radius not being carried forward when combined with Data Processor

· Fixed auto-comp star suggestions to provide the N requested stars instead of N-1

· Astrometry

· Fixed null pointer exception related to importing annotations from astrometry.net

· File Opener

· Fixed file counting bug in import image sequence that was introduced in 5.0.1.3.

· 16 bit integer images now open as 16 bit, rather than 32 bit images.

· File Import

· Provides file size and number of files before opening.

Version 5.0.1.00 (with ImageJ 1.53k)
(Last Updated: 1/24/2022)

Changes

· General

· Windows HiDPI scaling now supported, except the red crosshatch image cursor is offset from live aperture location

· Additional improvements to windows HiDPI scaling

· Fit Optimizer

· Optimizer includes support for fit width and custom step size

· Improvements to error messages

· Multi-Plot

· Fix conflict between auto and manual data point cleaning

· Fixed data trimming breaking optimization

· Multi-Aperture

· Fixed incorrect removal of aperture when radec list opened.

· Fixed incorrect aperture centroiding on second MA run after auto-comps are placed

· Fixed auto-radius aperture sizes not being saved in .apertures file

Version 5.0.0.0 (with ImageJ 1.53k)

(Last Updated: 1/5/2022)

Changes

· General

· Requires a fresh installation of AIJ from the University of Louisville website:
https://www.astro.louisville.edu/software/astroimagej/installation_packages

· Under The Hood Changes

· ImageJ updated to 1.53k

· Java updated to version 17

· PDF Support

· Writes publication quality (vectorized) pdf plots

· New FITS files supported

· Reads TESScut image files

· Reads TESS TICA FFI image files

· Reads TESS SPOC FFI image files

· Reads TESS postage stamp image files

· Opens LCO zipped folders of fits.fz image sequences

· Multi-Aperture

· Automatically extract aperture radii from T1 radial profile

· Automatic selection of comparison star apertures

· Fit Panel

· Supports data cleaning based on number of sigmas from fitted model

· Automatic optimization of comp star ensemble based on RMS minimization

· Automatic optimization of detrend parameter selection based on BIC

Daily Build Version 4.0.0.0 (with ImageJ 1.47i)

(Last Updated: 6/3/2020)

Changes

· General

· Requires a fresh installation of AIJ from the University of Louisville website:
https://www.astro.louisville.edu/software/astroimagej/installation_packages

· Upgraded from Java 6 to Java 8 build.

· Restructured Mac OS packaging to solve most installation workarounds.

· Various text boxes

· Direct entry into text box has been restored.

Daily Build Version 3.4.0.22 (with ImageJ 1.47i)
(Last Updated: 9/28/2020)

Changes

· Multi-plot

· 3.4.0.23 Added option to automatically update measurements table in "Add astronomical data to table" panel when plot is updated, if option is selected and the "Add Astronomical Data to Table" panel is open.

· DP

· Changes to allow images without headers to be processed (e.g fits images). Scaling and FITS Header Calculations must be disabled.

· Astrometry/Plate-solver

· A new WCS solution now causes the deprecated FITS header keyword “EPOCH” to be deleted to avoid problems with the wrong epoch being previously written to the header.

· Multi-Aperture

· Fixed a bug in Mean FWHM calculation.

· Image Display

· 3.4.0.13 Added Contour Lines functionality from the ContourLines plugin written by Eugene Katrukha which was inspired by streamlines project by Andrei Kashcha. The new function is in the Image Display Analyze menu.

· Coordinate Converter / AstroCC

· Disabled leap second update from USNO website, which is currently (2020.04.30) not available. New leap seconds will be added through new releases of AstroImageJ.

· FITS Reader

· 3.4.0.09 and later reverts to legacy fits-reader for opening uncompressed fits files and uses nom.tam.fits for opening compressed fits files.

· Added support for fits type “-64” images by converting to “-32” float images.

· FITS Writer

· Fixed bug that allowed 2880 filler size when it should have been zero.

· NEBcheck

· 3.4.0.22 The default ingress and egress times are rounded to 8 decimal places to fix “too long” error message.

· 3.4.0.20 Now reads default ingress and egress times from multi-plot V.Marker1 and V.Marker2, respectively.

· 3.4.0.14 Change language on user input forum regarding cadence to read: "Bin data to this cadence (seconds)"

· Extends max assumed FITS header depth to 50,000 characters when searching for WCS CD matrix.

· Correct an issue with the RMS limit sometimes being set to zero when no plots are enabled for output

· Adds RMS/3 and RMS/5 lines to RMS vs. DMAG plots

· Adds option to disable completion messages.

· Added “bell” sound at end of NEBcheck run.

· Stack Aligner

· Implemented fix that allows compress .fz files to work in virtual stack mode when aligning images.

· GIFwriter

· Now adjusts image contrast in GIF to match image display contrast for all images in stack

· AAVSO Formatting Macro

· Now reads last entered values for all fields

· Allows meridian flip as detrend parameter

Version 3.4.0 (with ImageJ 1.47i)

(Release date 2/24/2020)

· FITS Reader

· Now uses nom.tam.fits standard fits file manipulation libraries

· Funpack decompression supported (i.e. now opens fits.fz files directly)

· Fixed up .fz filenames to allow saving as .fits in Image Display and DP

· JDK8, but still compiling to Java 6.

Version 3.3.3 (with ImageJ 1.47i)

(Release date 2/16/2020)

· Multi-Plot

· Save data subset now provides an enable/disable checkbox for each data column list. This eliminates the need to set an unused column to blank before outputting the file.

· Adding a “New Col” of data on the Y-data panel now defaults to removal of the Scale and Shift values before saving the data in a new column in the measurements table.

Version 3.3.2 (with ImageJ 1.47i)

(Release date 2/14/2020)

· NEBcheck

· Now plots detrended light curves that are saved to the measurements table with suffixes _d,_dn, _fn,_df, _dfn.

· Now has an option to limit the number of stars search for a nearest neighbor. This is useful for very dense fields where runtime becomes an issue.

· Now remembers option settings across sessions.

· Now includes aperture size in pixels and arcsec on each plot.

· Image Display

· Renamed “Scale” menu to “Contrast” menu

· Renamed “Auto-grab auto brightness and contrast from histogram” to “Update auto-contrast thresholds when histogram range is changed”

· New North up, East left auto orientation option for images with WCS coordinates.

· If auto orientation is enabled, PNG and JPG images display without inversion and image overlays are disabled.

· Increased max zoom from 32 to 128.

· Fixed mouse controls caused by running Color->Make Composite Color Image.

· Multi-Plot

· Move phase folding capability from “X-axis” menu to Multi-plot Main subpanel “Phase Folding”.

· When using a Phase Folding mode, the “Duration” is copied to the VMarkers and Left-Right markers. Duration is used to set the region over which “Smooth” does not fit the data (i.e. the in-transit segment).

· Added “Add Data” button directly on Multi-Plot Main panel “Other Panels” section, which invokes the same function as the menu item Table->”Add new astronomical data columns to table”.

· The “Add astronomical data to table” and “MP Coordinate Converter” panels will remain open across sessions if left open when multi-plot is closed.

· Added tooltip to V.Marker 1 box to indicate how to enter ingress values occurring the day before the first data point.

· Vertical Markers now show X-axis values

· Shift, Control, or Alt-scroll wheel in either “Left” or “Right” marker box to move both markers by the same amount (i.e. maintains duration setting).

· Control-Alt-left or Control-Alt-right click in plot to reposition Left or Right marker, respectively, and the other marker moves by the same amount to maintain the same duration.

· Entering a new duration in the phase-folding “Set epoch and period…” dialog sets the same duration in days centered around 0 for V.Markers and Left and Right markers.

· Fixed bug that caused curve smoothing to attempt to smooth unplotted data.

· Multi-Aperture

· When auto plot and table update is disable, the table and plot now updates once at the end of the stack photometry run.

· Data Processor

· Added option to allow changing the default time to wait for file sizes to stop changing before loading a new file for processing (default wait is 500 millisec).

· Added option under preferences that causes DP to automatically run and then close. This is normally used for macro purposes only and should not generally be enabled using the preferences setting (it is enabled via the macro.)

· FITS Writer

· Fixed problem with NAXIS1 and NAXIS2 left padding for image dimensions less than 1000.

· Stack Aligner

· Added support to align on non-centroided aperture(s). To use, turn off centroid above image before placing aperture(s).

· WCS

· Fixed image scale when displaying images with “PC” matrix WCS solution

Version 3.3.1 (with ImageJ 1.47i)
(Release date: 5/31/2019)

Changes

· Multi-Plot

· Multi-plot now handles the display of predicted ingress times that occur across the day boundary to the previous day relative to the time of the first data sample. To cross the day boundary, the user should enter a negative V.Marker1 value. For example, if the ingress is predicted to occur at 0.995 the day before the first exposure in the time series, enter a predicted ingress time of -0.005 in the V.Marker1 box.

Version 3.3.0 (with ImageJ 1.47i)
(Release date: 5/16/2019)

Changes

· Multi-Aperture

· Added “Create NEB search reports and plots…” option to file menu (written by Dennis Conti).

· Added “Create RMS vs. Dmag plot” (part of NEB search feature written by Dennis Conti).

· Fixed bug that prevented measurements table updates when the Multi-Aperture option “Update table and plot” is enabled and Multi-Plot is open.

· Annotate ROIs are now maintained while placing apertures. Allows for example to draw a 2 arcmin circle which is maintained while placing apertures in the first image.

· Changed MA option “Update plot of measurements while running” to “Update table and plot while running”. With this option disabled, the measurements table display is not updated until the final measurement is taken and the data are not plotted. Disable this option to speed up photometry for very long sequences of images.

· When the “Use RA/Dec to locate aperture positions” option is enabled, and “Halt processing on WCS or centroid error” is disabled, if a stack image without WCS is encountered, multi-aperture will attempt to centroid on the last know RA/Dec pixel locations. This allows the RA/Dec aperture placement option to be used with stacks where all images have not been plate-solved. In this mode, only the images after a shift larger than the aperture radius need to be plate solved for a successful photometry run. This will also allow the apertures to be adjusted after a meridian flip by plate solving only the first image in the stack and the first image after the meridian flip (assuming telescope tracking is otherwise good).

· Added support for exact accounting of partial pixels within an aperture. The previous “standard” pixel accounting method (which can be selected in Aperture Settings) includes the contribution of a full pixel if its center falls within the aperture radius, otherwise it is not counted at all. The standard method is somewhat faster, but the exact method will give higher time series photometric precision for small radius apertures (e.g. R less than ~ 10 pixels).

· Stack_Aligner

· Fixed bug that caused stack aligner to ask for apparent magnitude input if last multi-aperture run used apparent magnitude entry.

· Fixed bug introduced in previous daily build that caused stack aligner to hang if multi-aperture had not been previously executed.

· Multi-Plot

· Added initial bare-bones TESS light curve smoothing feature.

· The legend for curves plotted in “Page Rel” mode now display the light curves raw RMS values if RMS display is enabled in the legend settings. The value displayed is the actual raw RMS and is not arbitrarily scaled with the light curve display.

· Transit Fitting – limited range of u1 and u2 to valid physical combinations.

· Transit Fitting – added auto prior starting point calculation for inclination.

· Transit Fitting – If the user setting for inclination is set to low, the starting value is auto adjusted to an inclination that should give a valid physical fit

· Fixed a bug that caused the linearity and saturation warnings to not work in the Reference Star panel, unless the Set Apertures panel had been opened once first.

· Fixed a bug that caused a loss of user entered comparison star AMAG values in the measurements table when the comp star was temporarily switched to a target star and then back to a comp star.

· Fixed a bug that allowed a NaN in the shift and scale mode preferences to cause a Multi-plot lockup.

· Fixed a bug that caused anomalous detrending when less then nDetrend+2 data points are available. Now detrending is disabled in that case since there are not enough data for the number fitted parameters.

· Image Display

· Added “Create NEB search reports and plots…” Option to the file menu (written by Dennis Conti).

· Added “Create RMS vs. Dmag plot” (part of NEB search feature written by Dennis Conti).

· Added “Auto-grab auto brightness and contrast from histogram” menu item to the Scale menu. With this option enabled (default), the auto brightness and contrast parameters are updated any time the histogram values are changed. This option maintains a consistent contrast and brightness throughout an image sequence.

· Added “Grab auto brightness & contrast from histogram” menu item to the Scale menu. This option sets the auto scaling parameters to match the current settings in the histogram.

· Added “Reset auto brightness & contrast to default values” menu item to the Scale menu.

· Added right-drag as a method to use measure tool (middle-drag and alt-left-drag are options too). Right-drag no longer adjusts contrast.

· Added an option that automatically updates manual image scale and directional arrows when a new image with WCS headers (i.e. has been plate-solved) has been opened (or solved). The default is enable. With the option enabled, if the first one or more images in a stack are plate-solved, the other non-plate-solved images will automatically show the same pixel scale and sky orientation. Not that if you change the image rotation (e.g. as a result of a meridian flip), the first image after the change will also need to be plate solved to enable the correct display of scale and orientation for the remainder of the image sequence.

· New Measurement Function

· Middle-click and drag (or alt-left-click and drag) to measure distance, PA, and delta magnitude, and optionally display the results in the overlay, Measure_Tool table, and/or log output window. Photometric results can optionally be written to the Measure_Tool table.

· Middle-click (or alt-left-click) writes pixel and WCS coordinates, and optionally performs photometry, and displays the results in the overlay, Measure_Tool table, and/or log output window.

· Left click on Measurement overlay graphic to edit the measurement display (and individual color).

· New ‘Measure’ menu above images to set Measurement options.

· Annotate and Measure overlay default colors can now be set in the Annotate and Measure menus.

· Left click on Annotate overlay graphic to edit the annotation and related display settings (including individual color)

· Image menus “Edit” and “Process” both have a menu item to copy FITS header from another open image.

· Fixed a bug that caused images to open 1 pixel smaller in width and height if the “Use previous window size” preference option is selected.

· Fixed a bug that caused an image to not display if an empty annotation is in the FITS header.

· FITS Header Editor

· Added a search function.

· Coordinate Converter

· Fixed bug that caused the local time 12/24 hour setting to not be save to preferences.

· Fixed bug that caused custom observatory altitude to not be saved to preferences.

· Data Processor

· Corrected default BJD_TDB Fits Header keyword name from BJD_UTC to BJD_TDB.

· Added an option in the General FITS Header Settings panel to allow the Target RA values to be specified as degrees rather than the default of hours.

· FITS Header Handling

· Added support for the non-standard use of ‘/’ instead of ‘-‘ as the date separator character in the DATE-OBS keyword string.

· Astrometry

· Increased astrometry.net timeouts.

· No longer erases all items in the overlay. Only Annotations added by a previous plate solve will be remove from the overlay.

· Color is now saved in the FITS header ANNOTATE entry.

· Aperture Settings

· Increased number of displayed decimal points for CCD gain, readout noise, and dark current values.

· Seeing Profile

· Changed normalized units on Y-axis to ADU

· FITS_Reader

· Modifications to allow direct opening of TESS FFIs

Version 3.2.0 (with ImageJ 1.47i) (Release date: 02/01/2016)

Changes

· Coordinate Converter

· Extracts ICRS coordinates from SIMBAD rather than FK5 (FK5 was dropped from SIMBAD query response)

· Added Davey Lab Observatory, PSU to the internal list of observatories

· AstroImageJ_Updater

· Update operation now updates AIJ version number in Info.plist CFBundleVersion and CFBundleShortVersionString (MacOSX only)

· Astrometry

· Windows installations now support local plate solving using the ansvr package. Requires version 0.17 or higher. See http://adgsoftware.com/ansvr/ .

· Annotation names with Greek letters now saved to FITS header as text-based names to accommodate FITS header character restrictions

· Image Display

· Fig bug that caused live photometer to not follow changes in the background region star removal setting after an image is displayed

· Multi-plot

· Light curve fitting panel

· Fixed a bug that allowed negative values of baseline flux (caused fit panel lockup after restarting)

Version 3.1.0 (with ImageJ 1.47i)

Changes

· Multi_Plot(MP)

· Fixed a problem with the “Save all” menu item that caused the aperture overlays shown in the field image saved as a JPG or PNG to be displayed in the wrong location on the underlying image

· Added a new menu item that creates Minor Planet Center (MPC) data submission format to Multi-plot_Main->File menu (thanks to Ferran Casarramona for the example macro from which the feature was created).

· Optionally handles the entry of reference star apparent magnitude in the reference star panel. New table columns are created or overwritten when changes to ref star apparent magnitudes are changed. The new columns are Source_AMag_Xxx and Source_AMag_Err_Xxx. The error values are calculated based on the target and ref star photometric error and do not include errors in the ref star magnitudes that are entered. The Source_AMag_Xxx columns are ideal for submitting to the Minor Planet Center.

· Image Display

· Added an option to show nearby SIMBAD objects in a web browser when right-clicking within an image with WCS headers

· Added RGB Composer to Color menu

· Corrected problem with display of RGB values in the ‘Value’ field above an image

· Multi-Aperture (MA)

· Added option to handle apparent magnitude calculations for target stars when magnitudes of reference stars are entered by user

· Added option to open SIMBAD to objects near the clicked location of a newly defined aperture (when entering apparent magnitude)

· Added capability to move apertures by clicking and dragging them to a new location

· Single step now supports two modes of operation after defining apertures. (Option 1) a single click on T1/C1 in each image applies all apertures, performs photometry, and advances to the next image. (Option 2) allows changes to apertures between images but requires a left-click on the T1/C1 star to place apertures. Then after making any aperture corrections, a right click (or Enter) performs photometry and advances to the next image.

· Photometer

· Increased max number of loops on background annulus star removal from 10 to 25 and reduced break threshold from 0.1 to 0.0001.

Version 3.0.0 (with ImageJ 1.47i)

Changes

· Multi_Plot(MP)

· New Transit light curve fitting facility which can fit simultaneously with detrending

· Select multiple curves for simultaneous shifting using CONTROL and SHIFT clicks in the shift value box

· Set the spinner step size for multiple curves using the ABOVE and BELOW options in the ‘Set Stepsize’ panel

· No longer need to enable “Auto Error” to save a new error column as part of “New Column” creation

· Auto legend and custom legend can now be displayed at the same time (the custom legend is appended to the auto legend if both are enabled)

· Added option in file menu to reset all AIJ preferences settings to default values

· Added Fit panel screen grab save option to ‘save all’

· Added ‘Save data subset’ option to ‘save all’

· Fixed error when dragging and dropping measurements table file when no associated plotcfg file is available

· Image Display

· Fixed image “stretching” display problem characteristic of OSX 10.10 (Yosemite)

· Fixed reversed characters in vertical plate scale display characteristic of OSX 10.10 (Yosemite)

· Fixed problem with “Save image as PNG and JPG for OSX 10.10 (Yosemite)

· Added “Combine stack slices into single image” option to Image->Process menu (same as Toolbar->Image->Stacks->Z Project)

· Fixed an issue that caused left and right arrow keys to not step though the stack after clicking tool icons above image. Keyboard focus is now returned to the image canvas after clicking an image toolbar icon.

· When the center-click option is enabled to center the clicked point in the image display, the mouse pointer now moves to the center as well to enable proper zooming

· Added option in file menu to reset all AIJ preferences settings to default values

· Multi-Aperture (MA)

· Dark current should now be specified in Set_Aperture in units of [e-/pix/sec] (was previously in [e-/pix/exposure]). The value will now be multiplied by the exposure time (if available in FITS header).

· Fixed bug that caused sexagesimal FITS header values to be incorrectly converted when copying value to MeasurementsTable

· Fixed bug that caused null pointer exception if “Use previous N apertures” was selected and no apertures were stored

· Set_Aperture (SA)

· Dark current should now be specified in units of [e-/pix/sec] (was previously in [e-/pix/exposure]).

· Stack_Aligner (SA)

· Fixed bug that caused alignment by WCS headers to fail if the FITS header contained the EPOCH keyword with a value other than 2000.0

· Fixed single-step mode

· Astrometry

· Added support for virtual stacks when “auto save” is not enabled. In this mode, the images with WCS headers will be saved to a subfolder named /wcs

· Increased timeout waiting for job to set up on nova server from 10 seconds to 20 seconds to increase reliability of connection to the nova.astrometry.net server

· FITS_Reader

· Fixed a bug introduced in AIJ that caused 3D FITS images to not open as a stack

Known Problems

· After fresh install (i.e. with no existing prefs file), table extension uses .xls, but .txt shows in option field. After the option is changed the first time, the two stay in sync.

· Image display rotation by 90 and 270 degrees is not implemented

· When image display is flipped or rotated, native ImageJ text “ROIs” are displayed flipped or rotated

· Native ImageJ ROI resizing may require the View options to be set to “Invert None” and “0 degrees” rotation to work properly

· AIJ hangs if a file is opened from the OS while a blocking dialog window is open

Feature Requests in Roadmap but not in this Version

General

· Implement a crop function that corrects WCS coordinates.

· Include get USNO stars plugin and fix link. Also look at mechanism to possibly use those star locations as aperture locations.

· Scripting (?)

· Change MacAdapter class to call “About AstroImageJ” and remove “About ImageJ” menu item

· Calculate RMS for all reasonable stars in image sequence to help point out variables in the field

Multi-Aperture

· Automatic identification and selection of comparison stars

· Automatic optimization of aperture size

· Support for elliptical apertures

· Support of fractional pixels in aperture

· Handle apertures that are off the image by issuing log message and setting values to zero

· Derive width, X-width, and Y-width from radial profile. Also in all modes?

· Find angle of widest and narrowest FWHM from radial profile and report these values

Data Processor

· Add ability to filter bias, darks, and flats based on FITS keywords (e.g. CCD-TEMP, EXPTIME) and/or filename and number

· Add support for subtracting average of overscan region from science image

Image Display

· Use of “Previous Pan Position” sometimes causes image frame formatting problem

· Implement image display rotation by 90 and 270 degree

· Add a stack combination interface in menus above image (KM’s email 3/22/14)

· Expand “Debayer FITS image” to process a full stack. Ideally the results would be a 2-D stack with color on one slider and slice on the other. Alternatively, separating into the result into different stacks for each color would be acceptable.

Fitting Interface

· Add MCMC fit parameter error estimation

· Add sinusoidal fitting capability

Multi-Plot

· Allow time display in UT on plot

· Bin data by time

· Add scroll bars to plots to enable plotting larger than screen size

Stack Aligner

· Add scale and rotate to alignment algorithm (based on WCS headers)

Astrometry

· Work with Dustin Lang to implement multiple plate solve jobs per session

Version 2.1.5 (with ImageJ 1.47i)

Changes

· Multi-Aperture (MA)

· Multi-Aperture photometry using WCS coordinates rather than x,y coordinates

· Export and Import apertures in RA/DEC format with option to specify Target vs. Ref star and Centroid vs. No Centroid on a per aperture basis

· Added support of per aperture centroid control and changed aperture display to indicate centroid vs. non-centroid apertures

· When defining apertures, alt-left click inverts the sense of centroid for a new aperture and toggles the centroid setting when clicking inside an existing aperture

· Added Multi-Aperture option to set variable aperture based on radial profile of PSF (to use, select variable aperture and set FHWM factor to 0.00)

· For centroid operation, added option to write a log message rather than halt the processing of additional apertures/images

· Fixed bug that caused width, xWidth, and yWidth to be reported incorrectly in the measurements table when using variable aperture mode

· MA specific measurement table settings moved to Aperture Settings panels to reduce MA panel clutter

· Stack Aligner (SA)

· New option to align images using WCS coordinates (no apertures required)

· Multi-Plot (MP)

· Optionally calculates and displays light curve standard deviation. For detrended light curves, calculates sigma only within the selected region for fitting.

· When aperture changed from T to C or C to T in Ref Star Panel, the aperture display automatically updates if an image window is open that has apertures displayed

· “Add new astronomical data” can now optionally extract RA/Dec values from the measurements table. These values can be added to the table using Set Aperture’s comma separated list of FITS header keywords.

· Added color code to Reference Star Panel to identify saturated stars

· Green checkbox background indicates peak aperture pixel less than “Linearity Warning Level”

· Yellow checkbox background indicates peak aperture pixel more than “Linearity Warning Level” but less than “Saturation Warning Level”

· Red checkbox background indicates peak aperture pixel higher than “Saturation Warning Level”

· New option in “Set Aperture” to specific linearity warning level

· Aperture names in Ref Star Panel now color coded red and green to correspond with aperture color

· In normalize mode, “Scale” now scales the signal about its average value rather than the absolute normalized value

· Reduced the default number of data column boxes to 5 in the Multi-plot “Save data subset to file” panel to fit laptop screens better. The default number of boxes can now be set to 1-20 in the data subset panel.

· Data Processor (DP)

· Settings not applicable due of the state of other settings are now “grayed-out” (disabled in the GUI). For example, dark scaling based on exposure time requires both Bias Subtraction and Dark Subtraction to be enabled, so the “scale” checkbox in the Dark Subtraction section is disabled unless both subtractions are selected.

· Drag and drop files and directories from the OS into the DP directory and filename boxes

· Master flat images are always normalized before processing starts. This allows the use of the master flats from MaximDL that are not normalized.

· Added support for drag and drop of apertures file onto DP main panel

· Added option to either de-bias or not de-bias the master dark (enabled only if bias subtraction is enabled).

· Added support for removal of ‘pedestal’ added by MaxIm DL

· Added support for signed integer FITS files

· Added outlier removal (e.g. cosmic rays/hot pixels) to the “Image Correction” section. Outlier removal will likely affect photometry and should probably not be used in combination with photometry. This feature is primarily intended for “pretty picture” data reduction.

· The flat-field gradient removal option has been moved from the DP menus to the Flat Division section of the GUI to make it’s setting more obvious.

· Enhanced and updated tooltip mouse over help

· Image Display

· New annotate feature which allows non-destructive display of labels on an image

· Add custom annotations to image overlay using a right-click at image position

· Edit or delete an existing annotation by right clicking in the image within the annotation’s defined radius

· Optionally look up object names from SIMBAD if image has WCS headers

· Optionally store annotations in FITS header

· Optionally store astrometry annotations in FITS header

· Optionally automatically display annotations from FITS header when image is displayed

· New “Annotate” menu above images to allow FITS header storage and annotation display management

· New button above images to control display of annotations separate from aperture display

· For images with WCS, pressing enter after pasting a RA/DEC coordinate pair in either the RA or DEC textbox draws an ROI at that pixel location

· For images with WCS, a single right click in the image produces an ROI at that pixel location (after centroid if selected) showing the corresponding RA/DEC coordinates

· Fixed bug that caused Image_Menus->Analyze->Multi-plot to not work

· Seeing Profile (SP)

· Now handles defocused stars

· No longer requires an ROI to be drawn around star (alt-left click near star OR click on star and then select menu option)

· Plot display has been enhanced

· Set normalized flux cutoff value (used to set aperture radius) in Aperture Settings

· Aperture Settings

· Redesigned panels to be shorter and wider to fit laptop screens better

· Reorganized to put rarely used table and aperture display settings on “More Settings” Panel

· Moved all other settings to Main Settings panel

· Added ‘Linearity Warning’ settings (in addition to ‘Saturation Warning’ settings)

· Multi-Aperture measurement table settings moved from MA setup panel to Aperture Settings ‘More Settings’ panel

· Astrometry

· Support for user control of SIP orders requested from astrometry.net during plate solve

· Can optionally store annotations/labels in FITS header (see new annotation feature description)

· Increased notifications of centroid progress during plate solve

· Allows cancel during centroid operations for plate solves using many stars

· Fixed bug that caused FITS files with extensions .fit and .fts to not save when using Astrometry

· WCS

· Now supports images with EPOCH values different than 2000.0

· Now supports headers with only CDELT, CRPIX, and CRVAL entries by assuming rotation = 0 (i.e. no Rotation keyword or CD or PC matrix keywords)

· Coordinate Converter

· Updated observatory list

Other Bug Fixes

· Fixed bug that caused FITS header sexagesimal values to not be interpreted properly

· Fixed bug that caused an error when loading plot config files into Multi-plot before a table was opened

· Fixed bug that ignored the inner sky radius when calculating sky background, if the inner radius was less than or equal to the aperture radius

· Fixed WCS code so that it looks at IMAGEW and IMAGEH rather than NAXIS1 and NAXIS2 (helps when images dimensions have been changed within AIJ)

· Fixed additional problems with image display on small laptop windows (should work down to 700x500 pixel displays now)

· Fixed “Middle click writes image data to results window” (was inadvertently broken in previous version)

· Fixed bug that caused back and white values to not be saved in auto and fixed contrast mode

· Fixed a bug in Astrometry that might have allowed median filtering to corrupt original image file

· Fixed bug that allowed xWidth = 0 which caused a lockup

Other Changes

· For compatibility with computers set for a “locale” that uses a comma decimal separator, AIJ adopts a locale to force a dot decimal separator

Known Problems

· Image display rotation by 90 and 270 degrees is not implemented

· When image display is flipped or rotated, native ImageJ text “ROIs” are displayed flipped or rotated

· Native ImageJ ROI resizing may require the View options to be set to “Invert None” and “0 degrees” rotation to work properly

· AIJ hangs if a file is opened from the OS while a blocking dialog window is open

Feature Requests in Roadmap but not in this Version

General

· Scripting (?)

Multi-Aperture

· Automatic identification and selection of comparison stars

· Automatic optimization of aperture size

· Support for elliptical apertures

· Support of fractional pixels in aperture

Data Processor

· Add ability to filter bias, darks, and flats based on FITS keywords (e.g. CCD-TEMP, EXPTIME) and/or filename and number

Image Display

· Implement image display rotation by 90 and 270 degrees

Multi-Plot

· Light curve fitting

· Bin data by time

· Add scroll bars to plots to enable plotting larger than screen size

Stack Aligner

· Add scale and rotate to alignment algorithm (based on WCS headers)

Version 2.1.4 (with ImageJ 1.47i)

New Features

· Added plate solve capability to Data Processor and the AIJ image display via network access to nova.astrometry.net API.

· Added support for FITS header time keywords UTCSTART (Sophia) and TAIHMS (Sloan), and added space character tolerance in time string

· Improved centroid method based on Howell, CCD Astronomy, 2nd Ed., p. 105. A special thanks to Matthew Craig, Minnesota State University Moorhead for writing and contributing the new centroid code.

· When no data are within normalize x-range, data are normalize by the average of all data (data previously not normalized if no data in user defined x-range).

Bug Fixes

· Now report error message rather than an exception when UofL update server is not accessible

· Fixed issue which caused Stack_Aligner to not work after converting an RGB image to a stack using the Color menu options RGB->Images, Images->stack

· Fixed bug that caused aperture photometry to hang is no valid time keyword is found in FITS header.

· Fixed a bug that reported and error for aperture sizes <= 1. The input test now allows apertures > 0.

· Fixed source error calculation that over estimated source error by sqrt(gain). Source counts and source error are still scaled relative to ADU rather than ADU*gain.

· Fixed bug that caused detrending to fail if NaNs are in detrend data.

· Fixed bug that caused NaNs to be backfilled improperly when tables of different lengths are merged as new columns.

Changes

· Reduced vertical space on non-scrollable windows so they fit on a laptop screen as small as 768 pixels tall.

Version 2.1.3 (with ImageJ 1.47i)

Bug Fixes

· Fixed several issues with display of RGB images related to brightness and contrast control

· Stack Aligner (align using apertures) is now compatible with RGB images, including support for stacks and virtual stacks

New Features

· added support for “Find Focused Slices” plugin written by Qingzong TSENG (adapted from “Select Frames with Best Edges” plugin written by Jennifer West) under Process->Select stack images with best focus

· created a version of “Find Focused Slices” plugin that supports RGB images (automatically selected using the same menu command above

· added support for third order non-linearity correction to Data Processor

· added option to Multi-Aperture to always default to the first slice at MA startup (enable/disable on MA setup panel – will be effective on next MA run)

· added help panel to Stack Aligner – help panel opens at start of aperture selection if enabled

Changes

· The “Value” display above an image now displays the values of “luminance (red,green,blue)” rather than just luminance when the image type is RGB

Version 2.1.2 (with ImageJ 1.47i)

Bug Fixes

· Will now open gzip compressed FITS files for file names ending with “.fit.gz” (“.fits.gz” and “.fts.gz” were already supported)

· Changing plot width will no longer affect the Y-axis tick mark spacing

· Fixed error message for images with RA and DEC FITS header keywords that do not contain other required WCS keywords

New Features

· Multi-plot detrending now includes a step function to detrend meridian flip data. Select Meridian_Flip as the ‘Trend Dataset’ and set the time of the flip in the Multi-plot main panel ‘Meridian Flip’ section.

· “Save as data subset” can output a column containing -1s before a meridian flip and +1s after then meridian flip (meridian flip x-position is set in Multi-plot main window)

Changes

· Updated Multi-plot GUI to match Data Processor and AstroCC

· Updated Multi-plot GUI to be consistent across Windows, OSX, and Linux

Version 2.1.1 (with ImageJ 1.47i)

Bug Fixes

· Fixed lockup that occurred when rolling mouse wheel to adjust plot while plot is updating (introduced by merge of IJ 1.47i with AIJ 2.1.0)

· Added work around for apparent Mac OS X Java bug that caused y-direction pixel scale to display backwards

· Fixed display of detrend coefficients when in “user” mode and when using <shift> , <control>, and <alt> clicks on variable buttons

· Fixed display of images with small pixel dimensions (images ~< 250 x 250 pixels caused a display formatting problem)

· Fixed bug causing blank lines in data file to be loaded as NaN (i.e. not a number), blank lines are now ignored when opening a table

· Fixed a detrending bug that caused a detrend variable to be ignored if a NaN occurred at least once in the detrending variable data column, now only that row of data is ignored in the table

Changes

· The virtual stack setting in the open image sequence dialog is now persistent across session

· Added general support for BSCALE and BZERO FITS keywords

· Added support for opening and saving 8-bit signed and unsigned integer FITS data types

· Added import to float-32 support for 32-bit signed and unsigned integer and 64-bit float FITS data types

· Added WCS info to window subtitle

· Added support for WCS SIN projection (in pixel to WCS direction) (TAN and SIN are now fully supported projections)

· Added support for older WCS PC matrix FITS header keyword format (i.e. PCxxxyyy)

· Added support for the first two axes when WCSAXES > 2. CTYPE1 must start with “RA—“, and CTYPE2 must start with “DEC—“. Other axes are ignored.

· Added WCS menu and moved pixel scale and arrow orientation settings to it

· Added an option to WCS menu to disable SIP distortion correction for all but TAN projections (for consistency with DS9 WCS coordinate display)

· Added option to save current WCS image rotation and pixel scale to AIJ preferences for later use with images without WCS headers

· When north and east arrows and/or pixel scale(s) have been set automatically by WCS, they are displayed yellow. When WCS info is not available, they are displayed red to indicate that the default user settings are being used.

Version 2.1.0 (with ImageJ 1.47i)

Important Bug Fix

· Fixed problem when writing 32-bit floating point FITS images (bug existed in version 2.0.0, but not in 2.0 beta releases)

Changes

· Corrected tooltip for BJD_TDB line in Multi-plot “Add new astronomical calculations” panel

· In FITS reader, BSCALE now defaults to zero in case the keyword is missing in the FITS file

· Added support for automatically setting north and east arrow orientation and x- and y-direction pixel scales, if WCS information is found in FITS header

· Changed default keyword for JD_MOBS_UTC from JD_MOBS to JD_UTC, changed HJD_MOBS to HJD_UTC, and BJD_MOBS to BJD_TDB

Version 2.0.0 (with ImageJ 1.47a1)

Version 2.0.0 is a major release that supports many new GUI features, saving of aperture settings, plot settings, image displays (including aperture overlay), interactive target vs. comparison star selection, interactive multivariate lightcurve detrending, table column additions, and table manipulation. AstroCC coordinate converter is a new module that provides time and coordinate conversions, resolves target names using SIMBAD, and displays finder field images using sky-map.org.

Changes in this Version

General

· Updated ImageJ to 1.47a1

· Added single-click automatic update to AstroImageJ toolbar under Help->Update AstroImageJ

· Added ‘Release Notes’ button to Help->Update_AstroImageJ panel

· New file naming convention requires “Preferences” to be reset to default (or advanced users can rename files as listed in the next four bullets). This includes memory settings for Windows and OS X.

· Windows launcher is now AstroImageJ.exe (rather than ImageJ.exe) and icon changed to Saturn

· Preferences are now stored at AIJ_Prefs.txt rather than IJ_Prefs.txt

· In Linux and Windows the preferences directory is now .astroimagej rather than .imagej (Mac is still /Library/Preferences)

· The Java and memory configuration file for windows is now AstroImageJ.cfg rather than ImageJ.cfg

·

Image Display

New Features

· Added a feature to allow the image display with apertures to be saved to a .png or .jpeg file

· Added ‘Open Apertures’ and ‘Save Apertures’ menu items to allow the currently defined apertures to be saved to a file and to reload those at a later time

· Drag and drop new image or aperture files onto displayed image to open automatically

· Added ‘Save All’ menu option to allow the user to define file name suffixes and to save the image display, plot display, plot configuration, table, aperture settings, and log file with one operation.

· Added slice delete icon

· Added centroid on/off icon

· Added icon to display apertures that are currently saved in preferences

· Added FITS header editing feature

· Middle mouse button now optionally centers on the clicked location

· Added pixel scale display option and supporting settings

· Moved image scale (brightness and contrast) settings from ‘Preferences’ to ‘Scale’ menu and added ‘fixed brightness and contrast (per image slice)’ option

· Added ‘Preferences’ option to display ‘mean’ value in live aperture rather than ‘peak’ value

Bug Fixes

· Fixed bug that caused a lockup when the user is zooming or panning while DP is loading a new image into the display

Multi-Aperture

New Features

· Added option to display a help window during the aperture selection process

· Added option to define more than one ‘Target’ star

· ‘Target’ and ‘Comparison’ designations can be exchanged with a shift-left-click in an existing aperture

Bug Fixes

·

Multi-Plot

New Features

· Interactive ‘Target’ vs. ‘Comparison’ star management panel allows comparison star set to be changed without rerunning Multi-Aperture

· Multivariate interactive lightcurve detrending

· Detrend regions can be selected with mouse in plot (control-left-click, control-right-click, etc. – tooltips in GUI)

· Normalization based on selectable regions of data

· Save a subset of table columns for submitting data to collaborators or websites

· Save and Open plot configurations to/from a file

· Save and Open plot templates to/from a file (same as previous bullet except uses a fixed user defined path name)

· Merging of two or more tables by row or by column

· Add new columns to table based on plotted data

· Drag and drop table, plot configuration, and aperture setting files to Multi-plot windows to open (or use menu commands)

· Save plot image as .png and .jpg

· ‘Save All’ menu item for saving image display, plot image, plot configuration, data table, apertures, and log files with one command, based on user defined file name suffixes.

· Add new astronomical data columns to table from Coordinate Converter based on input of time from each table row

· Table transpose under ‘Table’ menu exchanges row and column values for applications such a H-R diagram creation

· Error columns are now automatically selected when plotting Multi-Aperture created data

· When opening data generated by other programs, the Y-data values in magnitude can be converted to relative flux for additional processing

· Added color code to each row in Y-data panel

· Added button above Y-data selections that opens help panel to display data column naming convention for Multi-Aperture produced data

· X-axis can optionally be displayed in terms of orbital phase, days since Tc, or hours since Tc

· Y-axis can option be display inverted

· Magnitude can be displayed as negative magnitude so that plotting is in the same sense as non-magnitude-based data

· Holding shift while moving mouse in plot image can optionally display the corresponding slice in an open image stack

· When data is opened from a .txt file, the delimiter used is ‘white space’

Bug Fixes

· Multi-plot settings can be changed while data points are being added to a plot by Multi-Aperture without causing a lockup

Data Processor

New Features

· New GUI layout

· Added DP Coordinate Converter instance for calculating astronomical values (time, coordinates, airmass, etc.)

· FITS header updates based on data calculated by DP Coordinate Converter

· Target can be set from FITS header target name and resolved by SIMBAD, or from FITS header RA and DEC values, or by directly entering coordinates in DP Coordinate Converter

· Observatory location can be set by name from FITS header, or by latitude and longitude from FITS header, or by manually entering into DP Coordinate Converter

· The gzip file compression format is now supported for both input and output. Currently the headers are compressed in addition to the data.

· Optionally saves a the plot image and field image to static file names which can be used for display in other applications or on websites

Stack Aligner

New Features

· Now supports virtual stacks by saving each aligned image to a file

Bug Fixes

·

AstroCC Coordinate Converter

New Features

· This new feature adds the capability to calculate various time and coordinate formats from a target location, observatory location, and any number of time formats

· Optionally uses SIMBAD to resolve target name to coordinates and proper motion

· Links to sky-map.org to display finder field

· Supports proper motion, precession, nutation, stellar aberration, and atmospheric refraction calculations

· Supports local, UTC, JD_UTC, Heliocentric JD_UTC (HJD), and Barycentric JD_TDB (BJD) including leap second management

· Shows phase of moon, and altitude and proximity of major solar system objects

· Three instances supported: (1) independent instance under full user control, (2) Data Processor instance for FITS header calculations, (3) Multi-Plot instance for addition of new data columns in table

Bug Fixes

Known Problems

· Image display rotation by 90 and 270 degrees is not implemented

· When image display is flipped or rotated, native ImageJ text “ROIs” are displayed flipped or rotated

· Native ImageJ ROI resizing may require the View options to be set to “Invert None” and “0 degrees” rotation to work properly

· AIJ hangs if a file is opened from the OS while a blocking dialog window is open

Feature Requests in Roadmap but not in this Version

General

· Light curve fitting

· Scripting (?)

Multi-Aperture

· Automatic identification and selection of comparison stars

· Automatic optimization of aperture size

· Support of fractional pixels in aperture

Data Processor

· Light curve fitting

Image Display

· Implement directional arrow support according to WCS headers

· Implement image display rotation by 90 and 270 degrees

· Add additional color image manipulation tools to ‘Color’ menu

Multi-Plot

· Light curve fitting

Stack Aligner

· Wrap to beginning of stack is started process on slice number > 1

Version 1.1 (with ImageJ 1.45l)

Changes in this Version

General

· Updated ImageJ to 1.45l

· Changed Toolbar name to AstroImageJ (was ImageJ)

Image Display

New Features

· Added capability to set north and east directional arrows independently

· North is now referenced to the +y-axis and East is referenced to +x-axis

· Added auto contrast and brightness parameter settings

· Changed text buttons to icon buttons with tool tips

· Added button icons to control sky background annuli display, source ID display, and source integrated count display

· Added button icons to control clearing of all ROIs, run multi-aperture, and run stack align

Bug Fixes

· Aperture text is now displayed properly in when images are displayed flipped/rotated

· Fixed problem with display of RGB stacks when displaying less than full dynamic range

Multi-Aperture

New Features

· Added option to set aperture radii in Multi-Aperture setup window

· Added option to enable or disable repositioning of aperture to object centroid

· Added option to plot light curve data while Multi-Aperture is running

· Renamed “ratio” to “rel_flux_XX”

· “Show total comparison star counts” now adds N = # of Apertures of tot_C_cnts-XX columns. The reported columns are:
(Qty 1) tot_C_cnts = Source-sky_C2+…+ Source-sky_CN (i.e. the sum of all comparison star net counts)
(Qty N-1) tot_C_cnts-CN = tot_C-cnts - Source-sky_CN (i.e. the sum of all comparison star net counts less one of the comparison stars -– useful for determining effects of bad comp. star)

· Added feature to label each aperture with an identifying number that matches the MeasurementsTable designations

· Added sliders for slice and aperture selection

· Added aperture delete (click on existing aperture), add (click a new star), renumber (shift click a new star or existing star to renumber it as T1)

· Added capability to make changes to stored apertures before processing start (make changes as described in previous bullet, and then right click to start processing)

· Added table column for total comparison integrated count error (tot_comp_error)

· Added ratio column for each comparison star

· Improved centroid function (for single aperture operation also)

Bug Fixes

·

Multi-Plot

New Features

· Added support for true plot zooming (zooming previously scaled the bit mapped plot). Zoom in and out with scroll wheel or left click repeatedly to zoom-in and right-click once to zoom-out to the full view.

· Added support for interactive data section and deletion. To use the feature, press the shift key and move the mouse curser over the plot. The measurements table row with an X-data value (of the first curve enabled for plotting) nearest the cursor position’s X-value will be highlighted (selected). A left mouse click while continuing to press the shift key will delete the corresponding row from the table.

· All data columns entries can be sorted to a user definable order. Using this feature, the most frequently used data columns can be kept at the top of the list.

· Added an option to display predicted ingress and egress markers on the plot. The time can be entered directly as the fractional part of Julian Date or as UT time in HH:MM or HH:MM:SS format. After pressing <enter>, UT will be converted to the fractional part of Julian Date.

· Added new data point color selections.

· Added individual x-data column for each y-data column

· Added “operator” selection called “centroid distance” that calculates the distance between two aperture locations. To use, select a “Y-data” column related to the first aperture (e.g. ratio4) and a “Y-operator” column corresponding to the second aperture (e.g. ratio5), and then select “centroid distance” as the operator. By default, the distance in pixels is reported. To report distance in arcsec, go to the main panel “Preferences” drop down menu and select “Change pixel scale…” and enter a number for arcsecs/pixel and then select “Use pixel scale when calculating distance”.

· Reduced horizontal size of Y-data panel by combining certain GUI components. Y-error, Y-operator, and Y-operator error features are now enabled by changing the pull down menu data column selectors to a non-blank setting. Plotting relative to the displayed plot range (i.e. fit to plot) or plotting using Y-values directly is selected using the “Fit” check box. The same two scale and shift spinner boxes are used to accomplish both tasks, depending on the “Fit” setting. The “grab” button was replaced by an icon to save space. The “legend type” radio buttons have been replaced by icons to save space.

· A toolbar icon was added for all areas where extra option setting are available by right clicking. Either method can now be used to access the additional settings.

Bug Fixes

· “Y-data columns” panel non-wide mode now displays properly at startup

· Corrected scale and shift display values to match actual setting

· Disable plot zoom function

· Changed plot image to be displayed at 100% and with a size specified in the main plot window

Data Processor

New Features

· Added option run Multi-Aperture and Multi-plot directly from Data Processor window (a macro is no longer needed for these functions)

· Added an Icon that provides direct access to aperture setting

· Added an Icon that brings up the Multi-Aperture settings the next time it runs.

· Added an Icon that deletes all data from the measurements table

· Grouped certain settings that are infrequently changed under pull down menus for better organization and to save space

· Added feature to allow user to enter (or cut and paste) both RA and DEC in sexagesimal format into the RA field to populate both RA and DEC fields

Stack Aligner

New Features

·

Bug Fixes

· Forces variable aperture usage to off and aperture reposition to on

Known Problems

· Image Display maximize and return to normal corrupts display (drag window edge instead)

· Image display rotation by 90 and 270 degrees is not implemented

· When image display is flipped or rotated, native ImageJ text “ROIs” are displayed flipped or rotated

· ROI resizing may require the View options to be set to “Invert None” and “0 degrees” rotation to work properly

· AIJ hangs if a file is opened from the OS while a blocking dialog window is open

Feature Requests in Roadmap but not in this Version

General

· Add light curve detrending and fitting capability

Multi-Aperture

· Automatic identification and selection of comparison stars

Data Processor

· Implement BJD calculations

Image Display

· Implement directional arrow support according to WCS headers

· Implement image display rotation by 90 and 270 degrees

· Allow aperture radii to be updated directly in image window

· Add file type (i.e. 8, 16, 32, RGB) manipulation from menu bar

· Add a menu to the menu bar that combines various RGB image manipulation tools

· Put middle click/drag measurements in a MeasurementsTable rather than a log window

Multi-Plot

· Add ability to save plot settings as a template

MeasurementsTable

· Allow column selection and cut/copy/paste

Stack Aligner

· Allow user to left- click drag image to manually align with a reference image

Miscellaneous

· Fix various Linux terminal window error messages

Version 1.0 (with ImageJ 1.45l)

Changes in this Version

General

· Updated ImageJ to 1.45l

· Added AstroImageJ version information at ImageJ/Help/About ImageJ…

· Changed ImageJ/Help/Update ImageJ.. to open AstroImageJ webpage

· Now fully compatible with Apple OS X

Image Display

New Features

· Added a new set of “Zoom” buttons above the image. “Fit” fits the image to the window, “Out” zooms out, “In” zooms in, “In x8” zooms in fast. Click at the point on the image where the zoom should be centered before using zooming in, otherwise, the zoom will operate on the center of the image. The image data rotation features are now available in the “Process” menu.

· Double left-click on the image to perform a fast zoom in (i.e. “In x8”) at that point. Double left click to zoom out to fill the window with the image. Triple left clip zooms out to fit the entire image in the window leaving white space if the aspect ratio of the image and window are different.

· Added north/east direction indicator arrows with setting to allow user to specify the angle counter-clockwise from the default of north = up

· Added a preferences setting to set the size of the zoom indicator box

· Added view menu settings to disable/enable the display of the zoom box, x-y direction arrows, and the north/east direction arrows

· Added pixel scale setting under preferences menu. When set to a value other than zero, middle click-drag distance measurements are displayed as arclength.

· Added “fixed min and max histogram values” under Preferences menu. Enabling this option allows values to be directly entered in the “min” and “max” boxes below the histogram. In this mode the histogram range will stay at these fixed values until changed by the user. When not in this mode, the values are automatically set to the min and max pixel values of the image.

· Shift left-click drag is a short-cut to draw an oval region of interest (ROI) on the image

· Shift left-click is a short-cut to perform a single aperture measurement

· Control left-click drag is a short-cut to draw a rectangular ROI on the image

· Alt left-click drag is a short-cut to draw a line ROI on the image

· Press and hold “Tab” to move and resize ROIs. Astronomy mode is temporarily exited when “Tab” is held down, so any native ImageJ function can be performed during that time.

· Added several menu items to the “File” Menu to provide various file opening methods and saving formats

· Added “Edit” menu which contains menu items for editing aperture settings, measurement settings, FITS header entries, and stack parameters

· Added “Process” menu which contains various menu items for reducing image data and making various other changes to the data

· Added “Analyze” menu which contains various menu items for making measurements on an image and producing plots and tables

Bug Fixes

· The mouse “aperture” display now updates properly when the aperture settings have been changed

· When opening an image, the window no longer flashes on screen multiple times before finally opening

Multi-Aperture

New Features

· The total number of apertures is no longer required in the setup window. A right click in the image window will end aperture selection, thus setting the number of apertures per image. The number of apertures shown in the set up window is now the maximum number of apertures.

· The setup window now shows the number of stored apertures.

· Left click drag can now be used to pan the image during aperture selection.

· A new option to is available to enable double left-click fast zoom-in and double right-click fast zoom-out while selecting aperture positions. This option introduces a slight delay in aperture placement on the image and can be left disabled if desired.

· The first aperture selected is now displayed in green while the remaining apertures are displayed in red

· The aperture text font size has been increased

· Added a feature to check if Multi-Aperture may already be running since it is easy to erroneously start another Multi-Aperture run when in single-step mode.

Bug Fixes

· Fixed erratic behavior after aborting a run using <escape>

· Fixed erratic behavior after ending a single-step run using a right mouse click

Data Processor

New Features

· Combined the two science image “Filename Pattern” fields into one field with wildcard support (? matches any single character, * matches any number of characters)

· Added a “Browse” button next to the Filename Pattern fields. When a file is opened using this button, the directory path is sent to the Primary Directory field and the filename is sent to the Filename Pattern field. If an underscore character is in the filename, any characters between the underscore and the file type suffix are automatically replaced with a “*”.

· A “File Number Filter” “Exclude” string is now allowed, so that numbers that are common in a set of filenames can be ignored, which simplifies the setting of “Min” and “Max” numbers for filename number filtering. This field can optionally be automatically updated when a new filename pattern is entered directly or opened using the browser.

· Changed bias, dark, and flat "Filename Base" to "Filename Pattern" with wild card support

· Removed .fits file type requirement for both input and output files

· Master calibration files now allow (require) the file type to be specified

· Processed files can now be written to hard drive in any format supported by ImageJ by setting the “Format” to the desired file extension type (i.e. .fits .jpg .tiff etc.)

Stack Aligner

New Features

· Single step mode is now available in stack aligner, allowing image alignment for image shifts larger than the aperture size

Known Problems

· Image Display maximize and return to normal corrupts display (drag window edge instead)

· Image display rotation by 90 and 270 degrees is not implemented

· When image display is flipped or rotated, any text displayed in an overlay is flipped or rotated

· Image display control buttons sometimes lose color

· ROI resizing may require the View options to be set to “Invert None” and “0 degrees” rotation to work properly

· AIJ hangs if a file is opened from the OS while a blocking dialog window is open

Feature Requests in Roadmap but not in this Version

General

· Add light curve detrending and fitting capability

Multi-Aperture

· Label comparison star numbers in image overlay

· Automatic identification and selection of comparison stars

Data Processor

· Implement BJD calculations

Image Display

· Implement directional arrow support according to WCS headers

· Implement image display rotation by 90 and 270 degrees

· Allow aperture radii to be updated directly in image window

· Correct flipped aperture text display in image overlay

· Add “Auto Scale” user settings for customize the resulting contrast and brightness

· Add file type (i.e. 8, 16, 32, RGB) manipulation from menu bar

· Add a menu to the menu bar that combines various RGB image manipulation tools

· Put middle click/drag measurements in a MeasurementsTable rather than a log window

Multi-Plot

· Add x-axis choice to all y-datasets

· Change plot zooming to zoom-in on data range, rather than zoom-in on bit map

· Add ability to save plot settings as a template

MeasurementsTable

· Improve table update speed for large tables

· Allow row selection and cut/copy/paste

Stack Aligner

· Allow user to left- click drag image to manually align with a reference image

Miscellaneous

· Fix various Linux terminal window error messages