XmCCD
-----

The programs provided here offer a Linux graphical user interface to
astronomical and scientific CCD cameras.  Now primarily for Apogee cameras,
XmCCD was developed initially for SBIG cameras and legacy support for them
is still included in this version.

SBIG
====

SBIG has provided the library used here.  It is the latest one they offer
and the files included allow support for Android and Mac OS X. 

This distribution of XmCCD includes source code to utilize the SBIG shared
library libsbigudrv.so with a Motif-based graphical user interface. Please note
that these  SBIG library materials are subject to their copyright.

XmCCD has been tested with several SBIG cameras that we have at our
observatories, but not the very latest ones. It is expected that all 
current cameras will work with this software.


Apogee
======

XmCCD is being maintained for Apogee Alta and Aspen cameras when compiled and
used with  libapogeedrv.so . The open source code for this library is included
here. It depends on programs developed by Dave Mills, The Random Factory, 
http://www.randomfactory.com .  Please see the directory libapogeedrv for notes
on the changes needed to the source distribution in order to use it with XmCCD.

The most recent version of XmCCD is available from
http://www.astro.louisville.edu/software and you are encouraged to check 
there for the latest release, sources for other software needed to compile 
and run XmCCD, and supporting utilities.

XmCCD software is offered under the GNU Public License.  
Please see the files  LICENSE and COPYRIGHT for more information.

SBIG and APOGEE describe how to build and install XmCCD. It does require other
programs to compile and run, some of which are not usually present in Linux
distributions.  Before building and running XmCCD, you will need to install the
following if they are not already on your system:

Motif or LessTif development libraries and headers
fxload

Motif development libraries and the firmware loader fxload are not installed 
by default in Suse 12.2,  but are available from software repositories. 

The XmCCD source package includes and will install:

SAOimage ds9
xpa
cfitsio

SAOimage is the primary image display for XmCCD. The binary version works well.
 
XPA is a communication protocol used by ds9. It enables xmccd to notify the
display when a new image is available, and to accept coordinates from ds9 
to select regions of interest.  XPA should be installed system-wide with
the source code included here. Earlier versions will work if the library and
include files are in /usr/local/lib/ and /usr/local/include/.

The cfitsio library package provides standard FITS library support for 
the image file format in xmccd. A recent version is included in the XmCCD
source code, and should be used if possible. Earlier versions should work as
well.  If you use a different version, the fits library and header files are
expected in /usr/local/lib and /usr/local/include/.    

Our group also develops Alsvid, an Open Source astronomical CCD image 
reduction package. It is useful for batch processing of images to do bias and
dark subtraction, flat field division, and non-linearity corrections. Aperture
photometry in sparse fields is under development.    

We also use ImageJ with the astronomical plug-ins from Frederic Hessman along
with new plug-ins from Karen Collins in conjunction with this software 
for exoplanet transit measurements.  

AstroImageJ, GIMP and CINEPAINT are very useful for subsequent image
processing. GIMP is often included in comprehensive Linux distributions.  It is
an 8-bit image processing program comparable to Adobe Photoshop.  CINEPAINT is a
32-bit program similar to  GIMP that is more useful for  astronomical
images with large dynamic range.  Both programs will read the  FITS format
camera image files written by XmCCD or ds9. AstroImageJ, our Java-based data
reduction system built on ImageJ, is especially useful for photometry.

Links to sources for these programs are given on the web site for XmCCD.


John Kielkopf
26 April 2013



