GAIA and SkyCat

GAIA is a customisation and enhancement of the SkyCat image display tool developed by Allan Brighton and colleagues as part of the ESO VLT project. GAIA's basic display and remote catalogue and archive access facilities are largely the original SkyCat. However, the facilities for astronomical analysis, such as astrometric calibration, object detection and photometry are all enhancements unique to GAIA. Many of these enhancements are implemented by causing GAIA to automatically invoke conventional Starlink packages (such as PHOTOM for photometry; see SUN/45[10]) `behind the scenes'. However, the user just sees seamless interaction through the GAIA GUI (Graphical User Interface). Also, GAIA can access images in a wider range of data formats than SkyCat (see Section ).