SAOImage DS9 Version 4.0 New Features

Backward Compatibility Issues

A number of minor changes have been made to DS9 and the XPA and Command line interface of DS9 to bring about a more consistent behavior. While all efforts have been made to provide backward compatibility, in a few cases, this was not possible. Below is a list of changes in which backward compatibility was not maintained:
  1. xpaset -p region <filename>
    The defaut argument is now assumed to be a file name of a regions file, not a text string defining a region.
  2. The contour dialog menu options for copy and paste contours between frames has changed. Copy Contours and Paste Contours are now available under the File menu.
  3. The command line option -version now will display the version number and exit.
  4. The Use Cursors preference has been removed.

Catalogs

DS9 provides full support for loading, displaying, filtering, and saving catalogs. Most major catalogs can be retrieved from online servers.

2MASS Image Server

In addition to the DSS image server, DS9 now provides support for the 2MASS image server hosted by IPAC.

Composite Regions

A Composite Region is a region which is a collection of other regions, which share common properties. A composite region is composed of a center point and a rotation angle, of which all its members are rendered in reference to. For more information see Composite Region

Template Regions

A Template Region is a special form of a region which is saved in a special wcs coordinate system WCS0. WCS0 indicates that the ra and dec values are relative to the current WCS location, not absolute. For more information see Template Region

Instrument FOV

DS9 now supports a number of instrument field of view region templates. To select an instrument fov region, select 'Regions:Shape:Instrument FOV'.

New Regions

DS9 now supports ellipse panda (epanda) and box panda (box panda) funtool regions.

Smoothing

Support for smoothing has been expanded to include support for images, binary tables, data cubes, and mosaics.

Colorbar

The colorbar now displays numeric data and support for printing the current colorbar has been added.

View Menu

New layout options are now available via the View Menu.

Standard File Dialog Box

The standard file dialog box has been enhanced. In particular, the current file filter and file type are retained between invocation.

For more detailed information, Please see Release Notes