Release notes for version 3.6-6
- All the line fitting functions now also report a FWHM value.
- The line identifiers should now correctly take account of velocity
changes in the rest frame of the observer. The display of line identifiers
has been changed to remove the _lines postfix and to replace all
underscores with blanks when also displaying the shortname as part of the
labels.
- The plot coordinate matching option is now switched on by default.
This option matches different spectral coordinates between spectra plotted
together (wavelength, frequency, velocity and energy). To restore the old
behaviour (which is quicker for spectra which are all in the same
coordinates) just switch this off in any plot window, as the preference is
preserved between sessions. Previously users of SPLAT will retain their
existing preference.
- It is now possible to select redshift, a relativistic velocity and an
optical velocity in the quick change of units associated with a plot.
- The way that line identifiers are matched to the source velocity of a
spectrum has been changed. INCOMPATIBILITY: recessional velocities are now
positive, previously these were negative.
- It is now possible to define source velocities as optical or radio
velocities, as well as as a beta factor. Support continues for
relativistic velocities and redshifts.
- An optional synopsis figure has been added to each plot. This shows
some details of the current spectrum, such as it's name, the telescope,
instrument, object, position of extraction (when used together with GAIA),
etc.
- The SSAP query has been remodelled so that all queries are performed
concurrently. This means that a failing service will not block access to
all the others.
- The quick change of units has been extended to allow a change in
standard of rest. A option has been added that controls how dual sideband
spectra are aligned, by default this remains in the same sideband.
- The statistics toolbox had an off-by-one difference between the
selected stats and the individual region stats, giving slightly different
results. That has been fixed.
- All menus are now accessible using keyboard mnemonics. These are
indicated by an underlined character in the menu name. Pressing the Alt
(platform dependent) key followed by that character should post the
menu. Some menu items can be then activated by pressing a single character
(again underlined) or navigated to using the arrow keys.
- Keyboard accelerators have also been assigned to some more useful menu
items. These can be activated by pressing the Control key and the
designated character, when the keyboard focus is in the associated window
of the menu item. The accelerator of an item is written next to the item
in the menu.
- Some one character accelerators have been assigned to plot
actions. For instance you can now hide any overlay graphics by pressing
the `h' key, zoom in X by pressing the `=' key etc. Consult the plot help
menu for more about these bindings.
- When defining ranges (for fitting backgrounds and spectral lines) the
associated plot window is now brought forward and the cursor is changed.
Ranges can now be created without any graphical interaction (under these
circumstances the a range is initially created that covers the range
between the current axes).
- It is now possible to define a spectral origin. This allows the
plotting of offset coordinates.
- The axes of a plot should now always be drawn on on the edges, unless
the option to plot them in the plot interior is selected.
- Save and restores some UI defaults for filter toolbox.
- Add new controls for replacing displayed spectrum with processed
version in the polynomial, filter and interpolate toolboxes. Usability
improvement.
- Save order of polynomial as a UI default in polynomial fitting
toolbox.
- The splatdisp command now has an extra argument for clearing the plot
that the spectrum will be displayed in.
- Add a filter that rebins a spectrum to reduce its resolution. When
native NDF support is not available spectra are opened as NDXs. NDF/NDX
spectra can now also be saved to NDF using NDX support.
- When fitting spectral lines of spectra whose coordinate systems run
high to low, rather than low to high, the widths etc. are now correctly
reported as positive values.
- When deleting spectra in the global list the selection now remains set
at the next spectrum in the list (rather than selecting the first
spectrum).
- A bug when reading text files that use whitespace column separators,
other than simple spaces, has been fixed and the previous behaviour should
be restored.
- The set of automatically chosen colours are now dimmed slightly so
that they are always distinguishable from overlay graphics elements.
- The percentile autocut now just applies to the data within the X
range, when the X range is not being autoranged. When autoranged it
applies to all the data.
- An integrated flux option has been added to the statistics toolbox.
This can be used to estimate the flux in line of a background subtracted
spectrum.
- The use of file type "guessing" has been extended beyond the
File->Browse dialogue. This can now be selected from the command-line, or
from the File->Open dialogue. Guessing requires that the spectrum be
opened for each candidate type, so is intrinsically slower than file
extension based typing. Remote resources will, in general, be opened using
guessing.
- SPLAT has also been extended so that it can now interoperate with
other VO-enabled desktop tools using the PLASTIC protocol.
Release notes for version 3.5-1
In this release Starlink SPLAT has been enhanced to access prototype
spectral data servers (so called SSAP servers) that are being registered
on the evolving virtual observatory. Using SPLAT it is now possible to
make queries about a region on the sky and retrieve, display and compare
any spectra that are available. To signify this development SPLAT is now
often called SPLAT-VO.
Comparisons of such spectra are made possible by improvements to the
Starlink AST library which can transform coordinates between various
spectral systems (wavelength, frequency, energy and velocity) and
between a growing number of flux systems (currently flux per unit
frequency and per unit wavelength). This allows you to view various
spectra from differing energy domains as a spectral energy distribution.
Other changes of note in this release:
- Spectra can now be drawn using point markers of various kinds.
- A new tool for obtaining statistics about a spectrum, or regions of a
spectrum has been introduced.
- A new tool for setting the data units of spectra has been introduced.
- A new tool for transforming spectra by a redshift or by a flip and or
translation has been introduced.
- The grid drawn around the spectra can now be forced to stay within
the visible region of the plot window. This makes it easier to view
the spectral data values and coordinates, but at a performance cost.
Switch on the option "Only display grid axes in visible area" to
see this in action.
- Postscript output can now be created in encapsulated form.
- Graphics printing now provides PNG format too.
- Dual sideband data now have the coordinates of the second sideband
shown along the opposing X axis of a plot. It is also possible to
switch between sidebands.
- Log spacing can now be switched on from a plot (rather than by finding
the plot configuration window).
- Support for data units in the line identifier and simple text formats
has been added.
- Support for line identifiers to match against spectra that have data
units has been added.
- SED example data can now be loaded from the main Options menu.
- The data and coordinate units of the current spectrum in a Plot
can now be modified to preset values quickly.
- Several new smoothing filters have been introduced - Hanning, Hamming,
Welch and Barlett.
- Line identifiers are now also available in the webstart version of
SPLAT.
- Line identifiers that fall within range of a spectrum can now be
automatically loaded. Other changes allow the positioning to follow
a spectrum, have the short name shown as a prefix and use horizontal
orientation for the labels.
- Spectral coordinates can now have the source velocity specified
as a redshift. The spectral editing tools now include relativistic
velocities in their template functions.
- The motion tracker in plot windows can now report the coordinates
under the pointer. The default continues to be to report the nearest
coordinate and data value of the current spectrum.
- The scale factors used when drawing spectra are now related to
graphics size. Previously they where related to the spectrum
coordinates. This makes it easy to control the plot when displaying
spectra with very different coordinates (like those downloaded from
the VO), but will cause existing spectra to be re-scaled when new
spectra are added to a plot.
- If should now be much faster when re-drawing many spectra that are
being matching using their spectral coordinates and data units.
- The handling of errors when plotting spectra with hugely differing
coordinates should be improved.
- A long standing problem with graphics corruption between plots has
been fixed. (When the current spectrum was shared between plots
some drawing changes effected all plots).
- A bug that meant that the postscript output of a plot was always
written to the default directory has been fixed.
- Serialised spectra stacks now include full coordinate
information.
- Spectra can now be transformed to and from different data units
(Jy to W/m^2/Hz or erg/cm^2/s/Angstrom etc.).
- The SDSS spectral wavelength calibration is now understood.
- The system look and feel is now the platform default. Mac OS X tweaks
are enabled on that platform.
- Data units are supported when editing and creating new spectra
(polynomial and line fits).
- Line identifiers can now have vertical lines drawn so show the
position more accurately.
- An integrated flux is now reported as part of the quick line
fitting.
- The generate interpolated lines toolbox now includes controls for
drawing an interpolated line (avoids use of "Graphics" menu in
the plot window).
- The flip/shift toolbox now has a "line visitor" tool. This allows a
series of coordinate positions (lines) and, optionally, an associated
spectrum to displayed, one-by-one, and be re-visited simply.
- The flip/shift toolbox will now work with up to 5 decimal places, so
that redshifts may be applied with higher accuracy.
Release notes for version 2.2
This is a new release of SPLAT which is now part of the Starlink
Java Collection and is now released under the GPL.
The following changes have been made in this release.
-
A bug in the astrometry reading software has been fixed. This led to
the application of CDELT1 and CD1_1 scales to the wavelength range of
some spectra (produced by IRAF), which meant that the range was
underestimated by a scale CDELT1.
-
You can now specify the spectrum type on the command-line using the
--type option. Valid values are: "fits","hds","text","hdx","table" and
"line ids".
-
You can now open a spectrum using a URL, so spectra stored on remote
servers can be downloaded and displayed.
-
The handling of 2D and 3D input data has been enhanced. Previously
such data was just "vectorized" (that is laid out line-by-line and
displayed as a single spectrum ), now such data is collapsed down onto
the dispersion axis (if one can be determined). For 3D data each image
plane is collapsed in a similar fashion. You can also choose to
extract each line as a spectrum.
Release notes for version 2.1
This is a major release of SPLAT which is now part of the Starlink
Java Collection (STARJAVA) and is now released under the GPL.
The most significant visible changes to SPLAT are:
-
Tables support. You can now read and write spectra in tables of
various kinds, for instance FITS (binary and ASCII), VOTable and
various text formats.
-
Component browser. SPLAT now incorporates a Treeview-like component
browser so you can select FITS file extensions (tables and spectra)
and NDF components
-
Log axes. You can now draw either axis using log spacing. SPLAT also
supports AST escaped text sequences for super and subscripting.
-
Plot annotations. You can now add arbitrary text and shapes to a plot.
-
Interactive background estimation. SPLAT now offers the ability to
draw interpolated spline-like backgrounds for your spectra.
-
Better printing facilities. Printing to postscript is now a separate,
always available, option.
-
You can now divide a spectrum by its background to normalize
absorption spectra.
-
Line deblending. SPLAT now has a command-line script for deblending
lines using Gaussian, Lorentzian or Voigt profiles. This may become
part of a proper toolbox in some future release.
Other changes include, selection of the columns used from a table, text
files may now just contain a single column, many new options for
configuring the interface, the plot window now retains its size, and the
restriction that all spectra should have monotonic coordinates has been
removed (you can plot these, but the results may be unpredictable).
Release notes for version 2.0
This is a major release of SPLAT which is now part of the Starlink
Java Collection (STARJAVA) and is now released under the GPL.
The most significant visible changes to SPLAT are:
- The addition of facilities for viewing the spectral data
directly (i.e. in a table, rather than a plot), coupled with
the ability to edit the values (individually or globally
using algebraic expressions). Multi-level undo and redo
are also provided.
- The addition of standard line identifier catalogues for the
optical, IR and submillimetre wavebands. It is also possible to
import external catalogues using a standard text format.
- The addition of full support for spectral coordinate systems.
Spectra can now have systems that define the coordinate type
(wavelength, frequency, energy and velocity), along with the
units (which include, from much larger flexible set, angstroms,
milli/nano/micro metres, Joules, ergs, electron volts,
mega/kilo/giga hertz, metres/kilometres per second...) and the
two systems of rest frame (i.e. where the observations where
made and of what). This information can be used to align spectra
and line identifications automatically and perform operations
like change of rest frame (say from topocentric to heliocentric,
or centre of the galaxy or to the source itself) or change of units.
- The addition of various smoothing filters, average, median, Gauss,
Lorentz, Voigt and simple wavelet denoising.
Other changes include the ability to delete as well as extract parts
of spectra, to specify the types of spectra when the file extension is
not one of the standard types and to drag-and-drop spectra from the
global to plots.
Release notes for version 1.0-2
This is a minor update to SPLAT. It fixes a bug saving spectra to
disk files (FITS to FITS and NDF to FITS) and a bug that stopped the
plot configuration setup from being saved and restored.
Harmless error messages like:
!! AST: Error at line 1146 in file ASTJImpl.c.
!! Invalid Object pointer given (value is zero).
that could occur if you started interacting with a Plot window before
it was completely drawn should now be stopped.
Finally the printing dialogs have been updated for Java 1.4, which
means that the default page size is now A4, and a more useful set
of controls are available.
Problems
The simple binary maths window fails when dividing two spectra.
There is currently no work around, but in the next release you
can use the editing toolbox to invert the data values, before
multiplying.
If your system printer names contain the characters "_" or "-" then
they will not be recognised (this is a bug in Java). This will be
fixed in the next release.
Release - 1.0
Problems
The version of the JRE(1) released for Solaris (1.3.1_02) doesn't work
with SPLAT. To work around this either install a newer local version
of the JRE (note that you also need to
deinstall the "jre" package) and make sure that the "java" command is
found on your PATH. Alternatively get a newer version of the "jre"
package from the Software Store (when it appears, at the time of
writing this was planned).
If you see a series of error messages:
!! Invalid Object pointer given (value is zero).
!! AST: Error at line 852 in file ASTJImpl.c.
!! Invalid Object pointer given (value is zero).
!! AST: Error at line 852 in file ASTJImpl.c.
Just ignore them and repeat the command again. This error should be
fixed in a future version of SPLAT.
- The JRE is the "Java Runtime Environment", you can get a copy of this
from {SUN}. It is part of the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition
(J2SE). Get either version 1.3.1_03 (you may have to look around for
this) or a 1.4 version. Note SPLAT isn't extensively tested against
1.4, but is known to work.
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