National Aeronautics and Space Administration

******************************************************************************
                       RELEASE NOTES FOR HEASOFT 6.0.4
                             November 28, 2005
******************************************************************************

The HEASoft 6.0.4 release is primarily driven by the release of the Swift
software version 2.3, but also includes updates to several tasks in the
attitude subpackage and to the FTOOLS and XANADU utilities 'xselect',
'extractor', and 'ximage', which have been revised to mirror the current
development versions in use at the HEASARC.  Also in this release are
CFITSIO v3.004, an update to the CFITSIO Perl interface module v1.03,
and the latest releases of Xspec (v11.3.2p and 12.2.1).

As before, configuration-related changes thoughout the package means that
users who already have HEASoft v6.0X installed will need to completely
replace their software installation; there is no clean way to simply
overlay this new release or to update an existing installation.

******************************************************************************
                                ATTITUDE
******************************************************************************

aspcorr -
  Renamed 'partition' parameter to 'catspec', which now gives
  the path of the catalog descriptor

attdump -
  Fixed a memory allocation bug

coordinator -
  Limit the number of times the error message indicating events 
  which could not be translated to sky coordinates because
  they are outside the timespan of the attitude file is displayed

det2att -
  Output quaternions consist with input TELDEF file

prefilter -
  Note that the atFunctions update has some small affect on
  the derived latitude and longitude which in turn affect
  the cut off rigidity.  The elevation angle is also changed

newmakefilter -
  Fixed a memory initialization bug

tristarid -
  Made more robust with respect to ambiguous matches
  separate parameters for magnitude of position correction and
  corrected position errors

  Renamed 'partition' parameter to 'catspec', which now gives
  the path of the catalog descriptor

******************************************************************************
                                 CFITSIO
******************************************************************************

Version 3.004:

  - a major enhancement to the CFITSIO virtual file parser was made by 
    Robert Wiegand (GSFC).  One can now specify filtering operations that
    will be applied on the fly to the pixel values in a FITS image. 
    For example [pix sqrt(X)] will create a virtual FITS image where the
    pixel values are the square root of the input image pixels.

  - modified region.c so that it interprets the position angles of regions
    in a SAO style region file in the same way as DS9.  In particular, if
    the region parameters are given in WCS units, then the position angle
    should be relative to the WCS coordinates of the image (increasing CCW
    from West) instead of relative to the X/Y pixel coordinate system.
    This only affect rotated images (e.g. with non-zero CROTA2 keyword)
    with elliptical or rectangular regions.

  - cleaned up fitsio.h and fitsio2.h to make the definition of LONGLONG
    and BYTESWAPPED and MACHINE more logical.
    
  - removed HAVE_LONGLONG everywhere since it is no longer needed (the 
    compiler now must have an 8-byte integer datatype to build CFITSIO).
    
  - added support the 64-bit IBM AIX platform

  - modifed eval.y so that the circle, ellipse, box, and near functions
    can operate on vectors as well as scalars.  This allows region filtering
    on images that are stored in a vector cell in a binary table. 
    (provided by Craig Markwardt, GSFC)

  New Routines
  
  - added new fits_write_nullrows routine, which writes null values into
    every column of a specified range of rows in a FITS table.

  - added the fits_translate_keyword and fits_translate_keywords utility
    routines for converting the names of keywords when moving columns and
    images around.
    
  - added fits_copy_cell2image and fits_copy_image2cell routines for
    copying an image extension (or primary array) to or from a cell
    in a binary table vector column. 
  
  Bug fixes
  
  - fixed a memory leak in eval.y;  was fixed by changing a call to malloc
    to cmalloc instead.

  - changed the definition of several global variables at the beginning
    of buffers.c to make them 'static' and thus invisible to applications
    programs.

  - in fits_copy_image_cell, added a call to flush the internal buffers
    before reading from the file, in case any records had been modified.

******************************************************************************
                                  HEASARC
******************************************************************************

 extractor v4.61 -

  - Fixed bug that produced an incorrect error message about inconsistent XCOLH
    and YCOLH when reading multiple event files.

  - Fixed bug in extract events when reading from multiple event files with
    different numbers of columns. If later files had more columns than the first
    one then the events from those files could have zero values for some columns
    even for columns that were in common between the files but in different
    positions.

  - Fixed seg fault that arises if a line in a region file which includes a
    region specification also contains a comment marker (#).

  - Trapped the case of the grade column having no TLMIN/MAX. Somewhat
    arbitrarily assume them as 0 and 25 but this shouldn't matter as long as
    the real limits are within this range.

  - Fixed error introduced in v4.55.  When ellipse region was corrected to
    define the rotation angle in the correct sense, the corresponding code
    for box regions was broken.  The set_region and select_ellipse routines
    define the rotation angle in opposite senses.

 xselect v2.3 -

  - Trapped out the case of returning an obsno greater than the available size
    of the obscat array. This prevents a possible bug that can lead to input
    data files being deleted.

  - Fixed bug that can cause make obscat to delete input data files if there
    are more than 8 types of instrument available and the one chosen is > 8.
    Reset the size of the array to 20.

  - Suzaku-related changes:
    Default mission is now Suzaku.  Automatically group XIS spectra by a
    factor of 4 and add the DETNAM to the displayed info for the HXD so we
    can see whether an event file is PIN or GSO.

******************************************************************************
                                  XIMAGE
******************************************************************************

Ximage 4.3.1 -

  - Changed default equinox to 2000
  - Improved handling of exposure maps by utilizing the VIGNAPP keyword.
  - Improved handling of missions with unknown psf.
  - Added psf/pileup option to analyze piled-up sources.
  - Corrected Swift XRT psf and vignetting functions.

******************************************************************************
                                   XSPEC
******************************************************************************

HEASoft 6.0.4 includes xspec versions 11.3.2p and 12.2.1

Xspec version 11.3.2p
*********************
Please see http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xanadu/xspec/xspec11/bugs.html
for details on the xspec 11.3.2p patch.


Xspec version 12.2.1
********************

Version 12.2.1 incorporates the fixes and enhancements from all of the 
patch files (a-ck) for v12.2.0, in addition to the following key changes:

Fixes:

 - The Mac OS X Tiger build difficulties that had been causing runtime
   crashes have now been solved.  XSPEC libraries that were built as
   shared on other platforms are now also shared on OS X Tiger.  

 - OS X Tiger users should now also be able to dynamically load 
   their Fortran local model libraries, even if they share the XSFunctions
   COMMON block.

Enhancements and Modifications:

 - Runtime HELP can now be accessed ONLINE in html format, rather than
   just with the distributed PDF documents.  The selection for this is made
   in the new Xspec.init file.

 - Users can manually re-seed XSPEC's pseudo random number generator
   at any point in the program using the new "xset seed" command option.
   The default initial seed is taken from the time at program start-up.

 - Uses new global_customize.tcl file (in Xspec/src/scripts) for
   storing customized start-up commands that are to be run for all
   system-wide users.  Previously these commands had to be appended
   to the bottom of the xspec.tcl file, and hence had to be re-applied
   if xspec.tcl was ever patched.  

 - Model and model-related plots (ufspec and its variants) now always
   default to logarithmic scaling for both axes.

 - New model components added, additive: nsagrav, multiplicative:
   zdust and zsmdust.

 - Please see http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xanadu/xspec/issues/issues.html
   for details on the patch files a-ck.

******************************************************************************
                                  SWIFT
******************************************************************************

Swift software v 2.3:

----------------------
BAT specific tools
----------------------

batbinevt -
   The task now uses the HDUCLAS2 keyword to determine how errors
   should be computed; for a batclean map with HDUCLAS2='PREDICTED'
   the errors are set to zero.

   The task can now read both kinds of detector enable maps: table and image.
  
   Some bug fixes related to writing the TOTCOUNT keyword
 
batcelldetect -
   The ERR_RAD column in the input catalog is now handled as documented: if
   the ERR_RAD value is zero for a source, then the position is held fixed
 
   The coordinate precision of images with non tangent plane projections
   is better.

batclean -
  
   Bug fixes: the chi-square value is now correct; and NULL values are
   handled correctly


For more information on BAT analysis issues see the BAT Digest Page at:
  http://swift.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/swift/analysis/bat_digest.html

--------------------
XRT specific tool
--------------------

xrtinstrmap [NEW TASK] - 
  Create an  instrument  map  in raw coordinates. The task can produce
  individual  instrument  maps for each CCD frame or for a set of
  frames. The bad pixel extension of the input event file and the Field
  of View of the instrument are taken into account to  determine whether
  a pixel is exposed or not during the considered time interval.

xrtexpocorr [NEW TASK] -
  Apply  the vignetting correction to a sky coordinates instrument map
  using the information included in the CALDB vignetting file.

xrtexpocalc [NEW TASK] -
  Calculate the net exposure in each pixel of the sky coordinates
  instrument map.

xrtexpomap [NEW TASK] -
  Script to generate an  exposure  map  that  accounts for CCD bad
  pixels and columns, attitude variations and telescope vignetting for
  a Photon  Counting  event file. First,  an  instrument map in raw
  coordinates is created (xrtinstrmap task). Next,  a  transformation
  from raw to sky coordinates is done for each instrument map  using  the
  attitude  information  (swiftxform multi-mission tool).Optionally the
  task applies the vignetting  correction  to the sky instrument map
  (xrtexpocorr task). Finally,  the  different instrument maps in sky
  coordinates are summed (by ximage). The final exposure map contains
  for each sky pixel the value of the net exposure time.

xrthotpix -
  Add parameter to flag as bad events hot and/or flickering pixel in the 3x3.  

  New input parameter 'hotneigh'.

xrtproducts -
  Update calls to xrtmkarf

  New input parameter 'expofile'

xrtmkarf -  
  Update the algorithm to account for the exposure map in the arf
  calculation. This is only implemented for spectra obtained with the
  Photon Counting mode.

  New input parameter 'expofile'.

xrttdrss -
  Add parameter 'dnthr' to input the background threshold to calculate
  image flux

  Use FLUXFACT keyword value as conversion factor if 'convfact' input
  parameter set to 0.

xrtpipeline -
  Add the call to 'xrtexpomap' and updated calls to xrthotpix,
  xrtproducts, xrtmkarf and xrttdrss.

  Removed skyxnull and skyynull parameters.

-------------------
 UVOT specific tool
-------------------

uvotdetect -
  Added output parameter that holds the number of sources detected
  Decreased the SExtractor DETECT_MINAREA parameter for 2x2 binning
  When plotting sources, draw flagged (questionable) detections in yellow

uvotskycorr -
  Renamed 'partition' parameter to 'catspec', which now gives
  the path of the catalog descriptor

uvotsource -
  Changed output parameter allowed values to MAG|FLUX|RATE|ALL

uvottfc -
  Updated exposure parameter to allow value~error and DEFAULT
  Updated total count estimation for postage stamps

Web page maintained by: Bryan K. Irby