[News] New header handling module in Astro-WISE
John P. McFarland
mcfarland at astro.rug.nl
Tue Nov 20 16:51:01 CET 2007
Dear All,
As a part of scheduled upgrades and to fix a problem with value length
limits, Eclipse headers will be replaced in AWE. Unless you maintain your
own scripts that manipulate headers in AWE, you need to read no further as
no functionality will be lost and the changes will be transparent.
For those who require it, please refer to the "current" version of the
AWEPIPE checkout for examples of the new header handling ("AWBASE" will be
updated in approximately one week). Pay particular attention to
$AWEPIPE/astro/main/BaseFrame.py as it illustrates two major interface
changes: the new package import and saving of the new headers to Eclipse
written FITS files.
The new headers are the first insertion of DARMA into AWE. DARMA is a new
Data Access, Representation, and MAnipulation interface that uses PyFITS and
NumPy to access FITS files. It will eventually replace all Eclipse
functionality and will eventually include additional support for tabular
data and non-FITS data formats. Currently, only the header module is
supported and is completely compatible with the Eclipse header interface by
importing it as eclipse (e.g., from astro.util import darma as eclipse).
The most notable advantage of DARMA headers over Eclipse headers other than
the before mentioned value length limit (Eclipse's header interface, QFits,
cannot handle CONTINUE cards) is the FITS Standard header verification
provided by PyFITS. DARMA headers implement this in an on-demand fashion
that guarantees the header has the correct form every time it is accessed or
written to a file.
Please feel free to send any questions or comments.
Cheers,
-=John
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