Features
- Munipack is a free open source tool which aim is to be
a software eye of an astronomer.
- Munipack's goal is to implement easy-to-use tools for all
astronomical astrometry and photometry, access to
Virtual observatory as well as FITS files operations
and even more.
- Munipack provides a simple user interface
along with a powerful processing engine.
General
- All results are estimated by
robust statistical
methods. Mixed statistical distributions or random outliers does not matter
in this robust approach.
- As the heart of optimisation methods, Minpack has been selected (source code by Netlib).
Astrometry
Munipack has implemented the very complex
astrometry module:
- Robust statistical estimators and algorithms are implemented.
- Mutual correspondence of an astrometric catalogue and processed images
is determined by a developed matching algorithm on base of back-tracking.
- As the star position source, a catalogue or an already calibrated image can be
provided.
- Astrometry calibration can be stored in FITS
header.
Photometry
Munipack provides the classical method detection of stars
and the aperture photometry on base of DAOPHOT II.
Photometric Pre-corrections
A standard way to correct for all the bias,
dark and flat-field
frames is implemented.
- Averaging is implemented by robust statistical methods (eg. suppress
defects like cosmic-ray events)
- Flat-fielding can be applied on series of twilight frames,
including different levels of illumination.
- A very advanced algorithm
for flat-fielding has been developed.
Data Products
Colour Imaging
- Developed colour FITS convention
- Create of colour images in natural (not false!) colours from
observations in astronomical Johnson BVR bands.
Graphical Interface
Properties of Viewer:
Properties of browser:
- A fast thumb-nailing tool
- Batch operations on large lists of files
- Recognition of structure of usual FITS files including tables and multi-HDU extensions
- Import of digital camera RAW photos (CR2, RAW, …) to colour FITS
- Common photometric reductions (dark, bias corrections, flat-fielding)
- Search of FITS headers
Software Properties
- Munipack is designed as a multi-platform application.
Developed and currently maintained only under GNU/Linux.
- Munipack is developed on top of wxWidgets, a C++ toolkit.
- Both graphical and command-line interfaces are available.
- All functionality can be scripted. Therefore, one is prepared for a batch
processing of large amount of the astronomical data
(for preparation of data pipelines).
- Munipack's functional core is split onto working modules. They are designed
as independent routines written (mostly) in Fortran 95. They are
available directly and can be controlled via standard input and output
(possibly providing a network access, a scripting language wrapper, etc).
See Also