#!/bin/csh -f
# Print FOCAS news
if ($#argv > 0) then
caterr <<'EOF'

Print news and updates about FOCAS
  usage: focasnews
 
'EOF'
exit
endif
set date=`date`
echo $date :
more -d <<'EOF'
Welcome to the National Optical Astonomy Observatories Faint Object
Classification and Analysis System.  Please report any difficulties,
problems, bugs, suggestions, etc to Frank Valdes (Office 45, x219, Unix
mail 'mail valdes').  Manuals are or will be available through the
Computer Support Office.
------
November 4, 1988
New resolution classifier:
	o Uses CCD statistics instead of photographic statistics
	o It is much more stable and allows DARK objects
	o Interpolates PSF using Gaussian fit + linear interpolation in the
	  residuals
	o Greater flexibility in the template sets
	o Removed centering step
	o Various efficiency improvements (now ~3-4 times faster)
------
August 1988
New version which provides IRAF image format access, portable catalog and
area files, IMTOOL access, some new features and tasks, and bug fixes.
------
February 11, 1988
A new program was added for making a catalog of all objects with
neighbors.  It is a natural variant of PAIRS.  It is called INPAIRS.
It was suggested by Marc Postman.
------
May 26, 1987
There was an error in the offset option in DETECT.  This was fixed.
------
October 8, 1985
Two new programs; listpix and detect1.  Listpix dumps the values of the
image pixels.  This is used for doing pixel statistics.  Detect1 is
a version of detect without sky tracking.  The user specifies a constant
sky and sky sigma.
------
April 26, 1985
Lots of changes.  First, an error was found in the sky evaluation algorithm.
A memorandum is available describing this error and the changes which have
been made.  Minor bugs have also been fixed in tapecat and mtapecat.

The organization of the evaluation portion of FOCAS has been changed.
The original evaluate did both the sky determinations and the photometry,
astrometry, and moment determinations.  A new task called sky does the
sky determination.  It is used after detect and before evaluate.
It has options for determining sky by two different methods and for setting
the sky value to a user specified value or adding a user specified constant.
The last option is used in the script skycorrect which adds a correction
to the sky intensities to make the mean sky intensity agree with the mean
mode of the sky histograms.  See the memorandum for more details.

Evaluate does not evaluate sky and thus sky must be used before evaluate.
Evaluate does not use the significance test anymore (forget about the
significance value in setcat) and evaluated objects with negative luminosity.
Negative luminosities are recorded though a magnitude is also recorded using
the absolute value of the luminosity.  The DARK flag is used to mark these
objects.  Note DARK objects will now have the EVALUATE flag set!  The
purpose of this change is to allow evaluation of the distribution of
noise objects as a function of magnitude; i.e. an equal number of DARK
and non-DARK objects is expected from noise (provided the above and
below sky detection thresholds are the same).

Autofocas has been changed to incorporate the new sky evaluation structure.
------
April 3, 1985
The coordinate transformation calculation has been changed.  The transformation
is calculated directly rather than using an obscure method handed down from
the original FOCAS.  There is no affect for the users.
------
March 7, 1985
New programs for making ASCII dumps of matched catalogs:  mcatdump and
mtapecat.  They are similiar to tapecat and catdump.
------
Feb 16, 1985
Bugs have been fixed in resolution, splits, and setcat.  Splits has been
modified.  The old arguments sig and level have been eliminated (they
have the permanent values of 1. and -1).  A new optional argument, nlevels,
specifies the number of thresholds to test for splitting.   This will
speed up splits since a few very bright options could contribute 10000
or more thresholds.

Autofocas has been modified to use the new splits.
______
May 12, 1984
Review will now do interactive aperture photometry.
______
May 10, 1984
New routine 'catdump' added.  It dumps a FOCAS catalog as in formatted
ascii card images.  It is used in tapecat(2).
______
May 2, 1984
chimhdr changed to give the option to erase the comments and
start with new comments.
______
April 16, 1984
To position a tape to the either the beginning or end
and/or verify the tape file structure the following new command is available:

  Position tape.
    usage: postape (b or e) device
    Arguments: b - Position to the beginning of the tape.
	       e - Position to the end of the tape and print file summary.
	       device - /dev/rmt12 for ts11, /dev/rmt5 for kennedy
			at 800 bpi and /dev/rmt13 for kennedy at 1600 bpi
______
December 9, 1983
New programs unsplit and find_spikes.  Modified splits.
______
November 11, 1983
Detect has been modified to accept two additional arguments.  They are
the minimum and maximum values for sky in the initial sky strip.  Points
lying outside this range are not considered in the iteration to find the
initial sky levels.  This is used if there are bright objects in the initial
lines.  To determine these numbers use vtprofiles(5) or display(5).

FOCAS: detection phase
  usage: detect catalog [first last minsky maxsky]
  Arguments: catalog - catalog file
             first - first line to detect (default 1)
             last - last line to detect (default size of image)
	     minsky maxsky - the minimum and maximum sky values to
		    use in the interative solution for sky
  Additional files required: plate image
______
November 2, 1983
A new program OBJIMAGES is now available to extract images of objects
from a catalog to FOCAS image files.  These files can then be written
to a FITS tape for making finding charts or other purposes.  See the
manual page or program help information:

Extract object images to standard FOCAS image files
  usage: objimages [xsize ysize] < catalog
  Arguments: xsize ysize - the size of the object image(s)
                           (defaults to evaluation area)
  Input: A FOCAS catalog

  The object images will have filenames made up of the concatenation
  of the field name (up to the first six characters) with
  the object entry number.  Note that a much split object may yield
  identical filenames.
------
October 20, 1983
A logical bug in the definition of the significance level used in evaluation
has been corrected.  The value calculated was 9 times too small.  It
now has a more physical value in terms of sky sigma.  The default value
in setcat is now 1.8 which is identical to the earlier .2 in effect.
Again, the meaning of the signifcance level is that the average core
intensity must be that many times the sky intensity sigma above the
average isophote intensity to be considered a real object.
______
August 8, 1983
Program mfilter has been modified.  Rather than ask for filter options
bs

from the terminal the filter options immediately follow fn and
are quoted to distinguish them from the next mfilter option.  This allows
making scripts using mfilter which do not require input from the user.
The options c and w are also modified to take a quoted string argument.
______
July 29, 1983
New option W in display will write an image centered in the frame.
------
July 28, 1983
New program rotate does various rotations of standard FOCAS images.
This program is undocumented.

New program mcatlist does a general catalog listing of matched catalogs
with options like catlist.  This program is undocumented.
______
June 14, 1983
Program resolution has been modified to include a flag to turn off the
two component template fits.  See the help text or the manual page.
______
May 3, 1983
Program debias modified to do a series of images.
Programs rcam and autorcam modified with a byte swap flag.
______
Mar 18, 1983
Program debias averages a sequence of columns (the bias strip) and subtracts
the average from the image.  Used for Kitt Peak CCD's which have vertical
bias strips

Programs profiles, vtprofiles, and verprofiles extract the profile of a line
or column from an image.  Profiles produces an ascii stream, vtprofiles plots
the profile on a VT100 or TEK4014, and verprofiles plots the profile on a
Versatek.
______
Mar 2, 1983
Program avfld averages pixels together to make a reduced resolution image.
It works very much like exfld.  Its purpose is to make good finder images
of large images. See online manual page.

Program fvpds read pds tapes in an 8bit form using the mapping
dout = 256 * (1 - (1 - din/max) ** 2)
where max is supplied by the user to be the saturation value.
See online manual page
______
Feb 25, 1983
Program rfits has been enhanced with the option to compare a FITS tape image
with a disk FOCAS image.  Respond with c to option disposition and give
filename of FOCAS image.
______
Jan 21, 1983
Program objmatch matches catalogs by entry number.  This has limited usefulness
for the purpose of matching copies of catalogs with different evaluations.
No manual page.
______
Dec 9, 1982
Program exstar extracts the psf from the catalog header in the form requested
by setcat.
No manual page.
______
Dec 5, 1982
A new version of rcam called autorcam will read all the camera image files
on a tape assigning filenames 'framen' where n=1, 2, 3 ....
_____
Nov 13, 1982
New routines primarily intended for CCD image analysis are:

autoclean - an automatic cleaning script using clean(2)

skys1     - create skys from object image frames by
skys2       automatically detecting objects and removing then with clean(2)

avgsky    - create an average sky image from a series of catalogs

skyavg1   - create an average sky image from a series of images with the
skyavg2     object detection done automatically

Manual pages are available on line.
______
Oct 30, 1982
A new utility shell script tarfocas(7) writes all the FOCAS code to a
tar tape.  Not documented.
------
Oct 25, 1982
A complement option (pass objects failing the filter options) has been
added to mfilter(3).
------
Oct 24, 1982
New programs which are not yet documented are:
msort - sort a matched catalog by number of matched object in an entry
mchmag - change the magnitude zero points in a matched catalog
------
Oct 8, 1982
The IIS display is apt to become hung up when the tape drive is in use.
If this should happen use the 'break' key to get the MICOM.  Re-login
and type 'ps x' to determine the process ids for the login shell and
the display program which is hungup.  Use 'kill -9 id' on these two
processes.  Then type 'display' which will yield the message that the
iis can not be is opened.  However, this will interrupt the previous
display program and you can then begin again.  Beware, however, that if
the tape drive is still being used the iis is likely to get hung again.
------
Oct 8, 1982
In the shell sh(1) the help text character '^' used in FOCAS commands
is interpreted as a special character.  Thus, to obtain the help text
this character must be escaped using \ ' or " as in

$ focasnews \^
$ focasnews '^'
$ focasnews "^"

This problem does not occur in the csh(1).
------
Oct 5, 1982
Cursor option in display(5) now allows defining a square box to compute an
average and standard deviation.
------
Oct 1, 1982
Catalogs can be written to tape in 80 character ascii card image format
using tapecat(2S).  It's use is to transport results to non-Unix computers.
------
Sept 25, 1982
The FOCAS User's Manual is available online using focasman(7).  To get
a manual page type

% focasman program ...

where program is the desired program.
'EOF'
