AIPS:  2005 Quarter 4

Key Developments

1.   Methods were developed in the last quarter of 2004 to allow for
binary distribution of AIPS.  In 2005, 48 sites downloaded the frozen
31DEC04 version and 299 sites downloaded the development 31DEC05
version of AIPS using this capability.  In 2005, a total of 246 sites
have downloaded the frozen 31DEC04, 832 sites have downloaded the
development version 31DEC05, and 982 sites have used the AIPS cvs code
management facility.  In all, 1460 different sites (different IP
addresses) appear in one or more of these lists.

2.   The 31DEC05 development version was frozen and a new 31DEC06
development version was made available.  Prior to this, the CookBook
and all ABOUT, APROPOS, and other general documentation files were
brought up to date.

3.   In the previous quarter, a routine to correct VLBI data for
improved estimates of the Earth Orientation Parameters was described.
In this quarter, a procedure was developed which will fetch from the
USNO over the web the latest EOP estimates and apply them to the
user's data.  A similar procedure for total electron content
corrections was also developed.

4.   A significant error was discovered when attempting to use
sub-images for self-calibration.  All calibrator models provided with
AIPS were immediately corrected to avoid this error.  Later, a fix was
made to the software to eliminate this error in future.  The 21-cm
(L-band) model for the fundamental gain calibrator 3C286 was also
released during the quarter.

5.  A new convenience verb QINP was released to allow resuming an
INPUTS display at the current page rather than starting over.  A new
task CCRES was written to remove and restore Gaussian Clean components
from any image.  The older RSTOR, which was changed to allow component
subtraction as well as addition, requires the components to lie
exactly on the image's pixels.  The task that captures a TV image to a
PostScript output was generalized to read more than one image from
disk; this allows large three-color and hue-intensity images to be
displayed.


Goals for the First Quarter 2006

1.   Continue user support and bug fixes, as the major portion of AIPS 
effort.

2.   Add to the task which computes the fluxes of the primary flux
calibration sources new (2004 and 2005) flux values and interpolation
in time between the tabulated values.

3.   Provide support for pipeline data reduction, especially new
automatic editing algorithms.

4.   Begin investigations of new/improved imaging algorithms,
including those dealing with spectral index and multiple pointings.

5.   Install modern world coordinate handling software to enhance
and replace the original AIPS coordinate handling.