Download CURSA [1ex] Catalogue and Table Manipulation

SUN/190.11 —Summary of applications
10.3
20
Extra functionality
CURSA can inter-operate with a number of other packages. These packages provide additional
functionality which is not available in CURSA. Perhaps the most extensive and useful is FTOOLS,
which is briefly described in Section 10.4, below. Another useful external package is Starbase,
which is briefly described in Section 10.5, below.
The image display and analysis tool GAIA[12] reads and writes catalogues in the TST format.
Thus, catalogues in this format can be exchanged between CURSA and GAIA. Some limited
inter-operability is possible between CURSA and the image processing package KAPPA[5] (see
Appendix F) and the image analysis package PISA[13] (see Appendix G).
Finally, CURSA is augmented by the CAT Fortran 77 subroutine library for manipulating
catalogues and tables. Using CAT it is straightforward to write your own programs to perform
specialised tasks not covered by the more general CURSA applications. Programs written
with CAT are fully inter-operable with the standard CURSA applications (in fact the CURSA
applications themselves use CAT). CAT is comprehensively documented in SUN/181[10]. A set
of simple example programs are included with the CAT library.
10.4
Inter-operability with FTOOLS
FTOOLS is a package for manipulating FITS files, including FITS tables. It comprises a collection
of utility programs to create, examine and modify FITS files. FTOOLS contains many useful
functions which complement CURSA. It is developed and maintained by the High Energy
Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight
Center (GSFC) and is in widespread use around the world.
FTOOLS can inter-operate with CURSA. However, clearly, it can only access FITS files, not the
other formats accessible to CURSA. If your CURSA catalogues are in one of the other formats
you should use catcopy to convert them to FITS tables prior to accessing them with FTOOLS.
Also, in order to interpret the celestial coordinates in catalogues CURSA uses specific FITS
keywords in the FITS header. Though these keywords are perfectly standard, and FTOOLS
will process catalogues containing them, it attaches no special significance to them and will not
attempt to interpret the celestial coordinates.
There is a ‘home page’ for FTOOLS at the GSFC. The URL is:
http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/ftools/ftools_menu.html
An identical copy is maintained at the LEDAS data archive service of the Department of Physics
and Astronomy, University of Leicester. The URL is:
http://ledas-www.star.le.ac.uk/ftools/ftools_menu.html
This copy may be more convenient for users in the UK or Europe. The home pages give access
to a great deal of useful information about FTOOLS. Copies of the software and its user manual
can be retrieved. FTOOLS is available for all the variants of Unix supported by Starlink (and
numerous other systems).