Software is being developed to "stitch" together multiple astronomical images of small, adjacent patches of the sky into a single mosaic image of a large portion of the sky. These mosaics make data from large areas of the sky readily available for efficient viewing of many types of celestial objects and large-scale structure in the sky that are not apparent on a smaller scale. This software can be run on both single-processor computers and multiprocessor systems. The input patch image data can be of any type, resolution, coordinate system, and projection consistent with the Flexible Image Transport System (FITS), which is a commonly used astronomical data format. The software uses information in FITS headers to reproject the input image data into a common coordinate system and then to translate the data into the output mosaic at a resolution and in a coordinate system specified by the user. This software is part of a "Virtual Observatory" system being developed for analysis and display of astronomical images and catalogs.

This program was written by Joseph Jacob of Caltech for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

This software is available for commercial licensing. Please contact Don Hart of the California Institute of Technology at (818) 393-3425. Refer to NPO-21121.



This Brief includes a Technical Support Package (TSP).
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Software for Generating Mosaics of Astronomical Images

(reference NPO21121) is currently available for download from the TSP library.

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