PinpointWCS from the Chandra X-ray Center

PinpointWCS is being developed by the Chandra X-ray Center's Education and Public Outreach Group. This software simplifies retrieval of world coordinate system (WCS) data from FITS images for outreach astronomy images. Desktop planetarium packages aware of these data can intelligently position astronomical images on the digital sky lending a unique context to the outreach image.

PinpointWCS is in its beta release. It is released under the GNU General Public License v3. Please feel free to use the software, and provide feedback.

Features

Map WCS from FITS data to outreach images using a gnomonic projection.
Import FITS data and outreach images by drag and drop.
Scale and stretch FITS images for optimal viewing.
Pan, rotate, and zoom images.
Log and edit coordesponding pixel coordinates through the Point Manager.
Embed WCS directly into outreach images using the Astronomy Visualization Metadata (AVM) standard
Export WCS to a FITS image with header.

Download (Updated January 26 2010.)

Currently PinpointWCS is only available for Mac OS X. Linux and Windows versions will appear in the future.

Screenshots

Instructions

PinpointWCS provides an easy-to-use interface for retrieving WCS specificially for outreach images. After launching the application, the user is presented with an interface shown in the first screenshot above. PinpointWCS uses drop areas for the user to import images to the workspace. FITS images are dragged from the desktop and dropped on the left side; outreach images are dropped on the right side.

After the files are imported, the user will see both images loaded into the workspace, as presented in the second screenshot above.

On the bottom is information pertaining to each image. The information on the left prints the WCS for the reference image, and provides simple tools for scaling and stretching the image. Often these tools will be necessary to adjust the dynamic range of the FITS image for screen viewing. ref_info

On the right, WCS for the outreach is printed after it has been calculated. PinpointWCS currently has two export options – FITS and AVM. The FITS option writes a FITS image with the computed WCS in its header. The AVM option embeds the calculated WCS directly into the header of the outreach image. target_info

Available shortcuts:

New Workspace	Cmd + N
Point Manager	Cmd + P
Panning Image	Space Bar + Mouse Drag
Rotating Image	Cmd + R
Zooming Image	Scroll Wheel

References

Calabretta, M. R. & Greisen, E. W., 2002, Representations of celestial coordinates in FITS, Astronomy & Astrophysics 395 1077–1122.
Greisen, E. W. & Calabretta, M. R. 2002, Representations of world coordinates in FITS, Astronomy & Astrophysics 395 1061–1075.
Hurt R.L., Christensen L.L., Gauthier A.J., Astronomical Outreach Imagery Metadata Tags for the Virtual Observatory Version 1.1, http://www.virtualastronomy.org/avm_1.1_final_draft.pdf (May 2008).
Wells, D. C., Greisen, E. W., & Harten, R. H., 1981, FITS: A flexible image transport system, Astronomy & Astrophysics Supplement Series 44 363–370.

Acknowledgements

Development funded by the Chandra X-ray Center's Education and Public Outreach Group.
This software is inspired by work from Philip Hodge of the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Logo design by André Roquette

Questions and Comments

Please send questions, comments, and bugs to:

Amit Kapadia
Eli Bressert

Disclaimer: This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.