SAOImage DS9: Astronomical Data Visualization Application

SAOImage DS9 is an astronomical imaging and data visualization application. DS9 supports FITS images and binary tables, multiple frame buffers, region manipulation, and many scale algorithms and colormaps. It provides for easy communication with external analysis tasks and is highly configurable and extensible via XPA and SAMP.

DS9 is a stand-alone application. It requires no installation or support files. Versions of DS9 currently exist for Solaris, Linux, MacOSX, and Windows. All versions and platforms support a consistent set of GUI and functional capabilities.

DS9 supports advanced features such as 2-D, 3-D and RGB frame buffers, mosaic images, tiling, blinking, geometric markers, colormap manipulation, scaling, arbitrary zoom, cropping, rotation, pan, and a variety of coordinate systems.

The GUI for DS9 is user configurable. GUI elements such as the coordinate display, panner, magnifier, horizontal and vertical graphs, button bar, and colorbar can be configured via menus or the command line.

DS9 is a Tk/Tcl application which utilizes the SAOTk widget set. It also incorporates the X Public Access (XPA) mechanism to allow external processes to access and control its data, GUI functions, and algorithms.

DS9 Version 7.0 Binaries

Linux
Linux
Linux64
MacOSX using X11 Window System (command-line program for advanced users)
for OS version 10.7 (Lion)
for OS version 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
for OS version 10.5 (Leopard)
for OS version 10.4 (Tiger)
Windows
Windows 7
Solaris
Solaris
Source
Source
Archive
Older archived versions of DS9 are available here.

XPA Version 2.1.14 Binaries

Linux
Linux
Linux64
MacOSX
for OS version 10.7 (Lion)
for OS version 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
for OS version 10.5 (Leopard)
for OS version 10.4 (Tiger)
Solaris
Solaris
Windows
Windows 7

pyds9

The pyds9 module uses a Python interface to XPA to communicate with DS9. It supports communication with all of DS9’s XPA access points.
Source
Documentation

S-Lang XPA

SLxpa is a plugin which binds the XPA library and DS9 to the S-Lang language.  It makes XPA callable directly from the S-Lang interpreter and provides dozens of functions to control and interact with DS9 from modeling and analysis applications such as ISIS.
S-Lang XPA

Documentation 

Reference Manual
Reference Manual (postscript)
Reference Manual (pdf)

User Manual
User Manual (postscript)
User Manual (pdf)

FAQ 
New Features
Release Notes

Story of SAOImage DS9
Tutorials

Contact Information

If you encounter any problems or have suggestions with SAOImage DS9,  please  contact us:  saord @ cfa.harvard.edu

William Joye
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
60 Garden St.
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

Links

SAOImage DS9 provides visualization support for a number of  popular astronomical analysis software packages, of which a few have been listed below:

CIAO: Chandra Interactive Analysis of Observations
SAS: XMM-Newton Science Analysis System
IRAF: Image Reduction and Analysis Facility
fv: The Interactive FITS File Editor

Acknowledgment

SAOImage DS9 development has been made possible by funding from the Chandra X-ray Science Center (NAS8-03060) and the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Center (NCC5-568). Additional funding was provided by the JWST Mission office at Space Telescope Science Institute (NAS-03127) to improve capabilities for 3-D data visualization.

If you have found SAOImage DS9 to be helpful in your research, the following acknowledgment would be appreciated: "This research has made use of SAOImage DS9, developed by Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory" or reference the following paper 2003adass..12..489J