@@
@;  Copyright (C) 1995
@;  Associated Universities, Inc. Washington DC, USA.
@;
@;  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
@;  modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
@;  published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
@;  the License, or (at your option) any later version.
@;
@;  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
@;  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
@;  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
@;  GNU General Public License for more details.
@;
@;  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
@;  License along with this program; if not, write to the Free
@;  Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge,
@;  MA 02139, USA.
@;
@;  Correspondence concerning AIPS should be addressed as follows:
@;          Internet email: aipsmail@nrao.edu.
@;          Postal address: AIPS Project Office
@;                          National Radio Astronomy Observatory
@;                          520 Edgemont Road
@;                          Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA
@@
*******************************************************************
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                        AIPS : A Manual                          *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                          Volume IV                              *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                          Editted by                             *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                        Eric W. Greisen                          *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                National Radio Astronomy Observatory             *
*                                                                 *
*                     NRAO Computer Division                      *
*                                                                 *
*                Users' Manual Series, Number 31                  *
*                                                                 *
*                         June 15, 1981                           *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*                                                                 *
*******************************************************************
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                     Acknowledgements


     This manual and the programs in the AIPS system are the work
of a great many individuals.  Direct contributors to Volume I are
Edward B. Fomalont and myself.  The programmers listed below wrote
the HELP files reproduced in Chapter IV.  Contributors to Volume II
are Walter Jaffe, Gary Fickling, Bill Cotton, and myself.  The
programmers created Volumes III and IV.

     The programming staff at NRAO Charlottesville now includes:

              Edward B. Fomalont, project manager
              Eric W. Greisen, software supervisor and gofer
              Donald C. Wells, System Scientist
              Walter Jaffe, System Scientist
              William Cotton, System Scientist
              Gary Fickling, Programmer
              David Brown, systems programmer
              Fred Schwab, mathematician

All have contributed valuable ideas and software.  Bob Burns, the head
of the Computer Division, has provided much needed moral support and
assistance in the purchasing and maintenance of the hardware.  Bill
Meredith, Bill Wireman, Gene Runion, and Walter Brown all had a hand
in maintaining the hardware.

     Former NRAO employees have also contributed.  The POPS language
was developed by Jerry Hudson.  It was expanded and applied first to
astronomical problems by Tom Cram.  Tom also participated heavily in
the early discussions about AIPS and in the development of a pre-
liminary version called VPOPS.

     Employees of other institutions have also begun to contribute to
the project.  Stuart Button of the University of Toronto has helped to
code a self-calibration program for VLA data.  Frank Ghigo of the
University of Minnesota has offerred numerous, well-documented
suggestions on improving the transportability of AIPS to odd-ball
machines such as CDCs.

@@


      The Astronomical Image Processing System ("AIPS") is a collection
of computer hardware and software intended to perform a wide range of
reduction, analysis, and display functions on astronomical data.  It
has been designed in a very general fashion in order to encompass a
large variety of data types and in order to facilitate the addition of
new applications and algorithms.  The project is supervised by a
programming group at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)
in Charlottesville, Virginia.  However, everyone is encouraged to
write new routines, try them on their local AIPS system, and then
submit them to the Charlottesville group for inclusion in the main
package.  In the end, we hope to offer a substantial capability not
only for maps from the VLA, but also for data from other radio,
optical, and x-ray astronomy instruments.

     The documentation of AIPS is divided into four volumes:
a users' guide, a programmers' guide, a listing of the prologue
comments for all software, and, finally, the detailed program
listings.  This fourth volume, if we ever have the nerve to print
it, has the full source code listings for all types of code.
All INCLUDE files are expanded in full.  The subdirectories are
listed in the order [.APL], [.AIPS], [.NOTST], [.FPS], and [.PSAP].

     We would like to offer the best product possible.  Therefore,
we encourage users and programmers to report any suggestions and
problems with the software and documentation to their local AIPS
manager.  Contributions of new software are also encouraged.
