MIIPS

The MIIPS (Multipurpose Interactive Image Processing System) package is available at no cost to interested individuals and organizations. This scientific and engineering package, which is geared toward astronomy, performs image display, image analysis, plotting, and function fitting. Some of the operations include flat fielding, image arithmetic, image rotation, image cutting and pasting, image expansion and contraction, finding features, centroiding features, Fourier analysis (1- and 2-dimensional for any size array), wavelength calibration of spectra, aperture photometry, surface photometry and profile analysis, crowded-field photometry, and nonlinear least squares fitting. Image display and plotting are supported on several different devices, and postscript and eps output are easily produced. All the source code is available so that custom applicatons can be constructed. The MIIPS astronomy software package, which runs under VAX OpenVMS and UNIX (more specifically, Linux, but only some components right now) can be downloaded from this site. Support for Alpha OpenVMS is not yet available. The development of MIIPS started in 1981 at the University of Michigan from the Pandora and Roo packages, which were created at the Mt. Stromlo and Sliding Springs Observatory, Australia. These, in turn, made use some elements of the GYPSY package developed in Groningen.

Note: Under Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) xgterm fails to give cursor readback. A recent update, xgterm-tiger, solves this problem. Likewise, for Linux kernel 2.4, the update xgterm-fedora should be used.

The MIIPS package includes an enhanced version of SAOimage, a pseudocolor display server, on which it is possible to not only display images as in the origial version, but display images, video, and cursors, and plot data, all under control of easily written user programs. A library of callable subroutines is provided for this purpose, and all source code is freely available. Several demo programs which have been compiled for different operating systems are available as well.

Also included in MIIPS, and as a separate package, is the Binary Star Combined Solution Package, which enables one to simultaneously consider astrometric, speckle, and spectroscopic data in deriving the orbit of a binary or multiple star system. The program can also solve for the orbits of planets around stars. A future version will be able to handle interferometric data simultaneously as well.

Also included in MIIPS, and as a separate package, is the FITS Library Package. This consists of several routines to carry out operations with FITS image files.

Included as well in MIIPS, and as a separate package, is the Grades program which manages student grades in a feature-rich way.

MIIPS includes a variety of plotting options, i.e., XY plotting, contour plotting, and mesh plotting. This plotting software is also available as a self-contained package.

To see a list of all the files in the MIIPS OpenVMS package, click here.

To view the MIIPS OpenVMS documentation, click here.

Some Examples from MIIPS

	Pseudocolor Display with "Enhanced" SAOimage
	Video with "Enhanced" SAOimage
	Curve Fitting

Special MIIPS Component Packages that are available (source code for OpenVMS and Unix; compiled versions for VAX, Linux, Mac OS X PPC, and Mac OS X Intel):

Learn about the MIIPS Plot Package, a package consisting of a library of subroutines and user programs, capable of producing high quality plots suitable for publication, or go directly to the download page for the Plot Package.

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Download the MIIPS package