FITS-WCS and related software

Several implementations of the FITS WCS standards are available:

• The WCSLIB software distribution (i.e. this library) may be obtained from http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~mcalabre/WCS/. The remainder of this document describes its use.

• wcstools, developed by Doug Mink, may be obtained from http://tdc-www.harvard.edu/software/wcstools/.

• AST, developed by David Berry within the U.K. Starlink project, http://www.starlink.ac.uk/ast/. A useful utility for experimenting with FITS WCS descriptions is also provided; go to the above site and then look at the section entitled "FITS-WCS Plotting Demo".

The general FITS IO library, CFITSIO is available from http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/fitsio/. It is used optionally by some of the high-level WCSLIB test programs and is required by two of the utility programs.

PGPLOT, a Fortran plotting package on which PGSBOX is based and also used by some of the WCSLIB self-test suite and a utility program, is available from http://astro.caltech.edu/~tjp/pgplot/.

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