Gnuastro 0.21.43 released

[Mohammad Akhlaghi]

Dear all,

In preparation for the 22nd release of Gnustro, I am happy to share 
Gnuastro 0.21.43 (43 commits by 4 people in the 9 weeks since version 
0.21; see [1] below for the changes). See [2] below for a full list of 
changes and additions in this version. In particular, thanks to the nice 
work by Raul Infante-Sainz you can now create nice color images like the 
attached 'm51-color.jpg' with the new 'astscript-color-faint-gray' 
script, see the newly added Tutorial for more (an RNAAS publication is 
submitted with this announcement).

=========================================================
========= But first: Gnuastro citations in 2023 =========

The year 2023 saw an almost three times increase in citations of 
Gnuastro! Attached you can see a screenshot from the NASA Astrophysics 
Data System (ADS) "Metrics" page that was retrieved just before sending 
this email. It is a great encouragement to see that Gnuastro is becoming 
more useful in very diverse fields, thank you for proper citations that 
allows this :-).

Gnuastro ADS Library:
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/public-libraries/0QdYMuVCQdmygEh0Vs_4Ew

=========================================================

Here is the compressed source and the GPG detached signature for this 
release. To uncompress Lzip tarballs, see [3]. To check the validity of 
the tarballs using the GPG detached signature (*.sig) see [4]. See [5] 
for the list of software used to bootstrap this tarball.

  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnuastro/gnuastro-0.21.43-3101.tar.lz 
(4.6MB)
  https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnuastro/gnuastro-0.21.43-3101.tar.lz.sig 
(833B)

Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums (other ways to check if the 
tarball you download is what we distributed). Just note that the SHA256 
checksum is base64 encoded, instead of the hexadecimal encoding that 
most checksum tools default to (see [6] on how to generate it).

  cd7dc089ee326bef7b0a5cdfbc8873331dc35df6  gnuastro-0.21.43-3101.tar.lz
  Qjk0r78gGEbT4d6H0t8QqfkhdXOOv1ABrPlOHRk74Vw= 
gnuastro-0.21.43-3101.tar.lz

If any of Gnuastro's programs or libraries are useful in your work, 
please don't forget to cite _and_ acknowledge them. For citation and 
acknowledgment guidelines, run the relevant programs with a `--cite' 
option (it can be different for different programs, so run it for all 
the programs you use). Citations _and_ acknowledgments are vital for the 
continued work on Gnuastro, so please don't forget to support us by 
doing so.

With the best wishes for 2024,
Cheers,
Mohammad

--
Dr. Mohammad Akhlaghi
Staff Researcher
Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA),
Plaza San Juan 1, Planta 2, Teruel 44001, Spain





[1] Thanks to everyone who has contributed!

The following people contributed changes to this release:

  Faezeh Bidjarchian (5)
  Mohammad Akhlaghi (18)
  Raul Infante-Sainz (19)
  Sepideh Eskandarlou (1)

The following people provided comments, suggestions or found bugs:

  Ignacio Ruiz Cejudo
  Sepideh Eskandarlou
  Teet Kuutma





[2] Noteworthy changes in Gnuastro 0.21.43

** New features
*** New program
  - 'astscript-color-faint-gray': a new installed script to maximize the
    visualization of the contents within your astronomical images. It does
    this by showing the brighter parts of the image as color, intermediate
    regions as black and the noisy/faint regions as gray/white. The new
    "Color images with full dynamic range" tutorial in the Tutorials
    chapter describes how to optimize this script.

*** Arithmetic
  - New operators:
    - rotate-coord: given a 2D point's coordinates, return the coordinates
      after it has been rotated by your requested angle around your
      requested center (see documentation for example).
    - mad: Median Absolute Deviation (MAD) stacking.
    - madclip-mad: MAD after MAD-clipping stacking.
    - madclip-std: Standard deviation after MAD-clipping stacking.
    - madclip-mean: Mean after MAD-clipping stacking.
    - madclip-median: Median after MAD-clipping stacking.
    - madclip-number: Number of elements after MAD-clipping stacking.
    - madclip-fill-mad: MAD after filled MAD-clipping stacking: this
                        involves a two-phase clipping: after the first
                        clipping, Arithmetic will "fill" the unclipped
                        holes in each input and masks them for a second
                        round. This is critical for clipping more
                        diffuse outliers: where a pixel may not be
                        clipped individually and will produce biased
                        results, but due to proximity with many nearby
                        clipped pixels, it can be discarded and thus its
                        effect on the final stack be removed.
    - madclip-fill-std: Standard deviation after filled MAD-clipping 
stacking.
    - madclip-fill-mean: Mean after filled MAD-clipping stacking.
    - madclip-fill-median: Median after filled MAD-clipping stacking.
    - madclip-fill-number: Num. of elements after filled MAD-clipping 
stacking.
    - sigclip-fill-mad: MAD after filled MAD-clipping stacking.
    - sigclip-fill-std: Standard deviation after filled MAD-clipping 
stacking.
    - sigclip-fill-mean: Mean after filled MAD-clipping stacking.
    - sigclip-fill-median: Median after filled MAD-clipping stacking.
    - sigclip-fill-number: Num. of elements after filled MAD-clipping 
stacking.
    - sigclip-mad: MAD after sigma-clipping stacking.
    - collapse-madclip-mad: Collapse dim. by MAD-clipped MAD.
    - collapse-madclip-std: Collapse dim. by MAD-clipped STD.
    - collapse-madclip-mean: Collapse dim. by MAD-clipped mean.
    - collapse-madclip-median: Collapse dim. by MAD-clipped median.
    - collapse-madclip-number: Collapse dim. by MAD-clipped number.
    - collapse-madclip-fill-mad: Collapse dim. by filled MAD-clipped MAD.
    - collapse-madclip-fill-std: Collapse dim. by filled MAD-clipped STD.
    - collapse-madclip-fill-mean: Collapse dim. by filled MAD-clipped mean.
    - collapse-madclip-fill-median: Collapse dim. by filled MAD-clipped 
median.
    - collapse-madclip-fill-number: Collapse dim. by filled MAD-clipped 
num.
    - collapse-sigclip-mad: Collapse dim. by sigma-clipped MAD.
    - collapse-sigclip-fill-mad: Collapse dim. by filled sigma-clipped MAD.
    - collapse-sigclip-fill-std: Collapse dim. by filled sigma-clipped STD.
    - collapse-sigclip-fill-mean: Collapse dim. by filled sigma-clipped 
mean.
    - collapse-sigclip-fill-median: Collapse dim. by filled sigma-clip. 
median.
    - collapse-sigclip-fill-number: Collapse dim. by filled 
sigma-clipped num.

*** Statistics
  --mad: Median Absolute Deviation (MAD) of input dataset.
  --madclip: MAD-clipping, showing intermediate results.
  --sigclip-mad: MAD of input after sigma-clipping.
  --madclip-number: Number of input elements after MAD-clipping.
  --madclip-median: Median of input elements after MAD-clipping.
  --madclip-mean: Mean of input elements after MAD-clipping.
  --madclip-std: Standard deviation of input elements after MAD-clipping.
  --madclip-mad: MAD of input elements after MAD-clipping.
  --mclipparams: Parameters of MAD-clipping, similar to sigma-clipping. 
Note
                 that in a Gaussian distribution, MAD = 0.67 sigma, so if
                 you want something similar to 3-sigma (the default), you
                 should set the MAD multiple to 5 (the default).

*** Library
**** Functions
  - gal_dimension_collapse_mclip_mad: MAD-clipped MAD.
  - gal_dimension_collapse_mclip_fill_mad: filled MAD-clipped MAD.
  - gal_dimension_collapse_mclip_std: MAD-clipped STD.
  - gal_dimension_collapse_mclip_fill_std: filled MAD-clipped STD.
  - gal_dimension_collapse_mclip_mean: MAD-clipped mean.
  - gal_dimension_collapse_mclip_fill_mean: filled MAD-clipped mean
  - gal_dimension_collapse_mclip_median: MAD-clipped median.
  - gal_dimension_collapse_mclip_fill_median: filled MAD-clipped median.
  - gal_dimension_collapse_mclip_number: MAD-clipped number.
  - gal_dimension_collapse_mclip_fill_number: filled MAD-clipped number.
  - gal_dimension_collapse_sclip_mad: sigma-clipped MAD
  - gal_dimension_collapse_sclip_fill_mad: filled sigma-clipped MAD.
  - gal_dimension_collapse_sclip_fill_std: filled sigma-clipped STD.
  - gal_dimension_collapse_sclip_fill_mean: filled sigma-clipped mean
  - gal_dimension_collapse_sclip_fill_median: filled sigma-clipped median.
  - gal_dimension_collapse_sclip_fill_number: filled sigma-clipped number.
  - gal_statistics_clip_mad: MAD clipping of given input.
  - gal_statistics_mad: return median absolute deviation (MAD).
  - gal_statistics_median_mad: return median and MAD.

**** Macros
  - Used by 'gal_arithmetic':
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_SIGCLIP_MAD: Sigma-clipped MAD.
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_SIGCLIP_MAD: Sigma-clipped STD.
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_SIGCLIP_FILL_NUMBER: MAD-clipped num. of arrays.
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_SIGCLIP_FILL_MEAN: MAD-clipped mean of arrays.
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_SIGCLIP_FILL_MEDIAN: MAD-clipped median of arrays.
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_SIGCLIP_FILL_STD: MAD-clipped STD of arrays.
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_SIGCLIP_FILL_MAD: MAD-clipped STD of arrays.
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_MADCLIP_NUMBER: MAD-clipped number of mult. arrays.
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_MADCLIP_MEAN: MAD-clipped mean of multiple arrays.
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_MADCLIP_MEDIAN: MAD-clipped median of mult. arrays.
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_MADCLIP_STD: MAD-clipped STD of multiple arrays.
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_MADCLIP_MAD: MAD-clipped STD of multiple arrays.
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_MADCLIP_FILL_NUMBER: MAD-clipped num. of arrays.
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_MADCLIP_FILL_MEAN: MAD-clipped mean of arrays.
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_MADCLIP_FILL_MEDIAN: MAD-clipped median of arrays.
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_MADCLIP_FILL_STD: MAD-clipped STD of arrays.
    - GAL_ARITHMETIC_OP_MADCLIP_FILL_MAD: MAD-clipped STD of arrays.
  - Used by 'gal_statistics_clip_sigma' and 'gal_statistics_clip_mad':
    - GAL_STATISTICS_CLIP_OUTCOL_NUMBER_USED: index of final number in 
output.
    - GAL_STATISTICS_CLIP_OUTCOL_MEAN: index of clipped mean in output.
    - GAL_STATISTICS_CLIP_OUTCOL_STD: index of clipped STD in output.
    - GAL_STATISTICS_CLIP_OUTCOL_MEDIAN: index of clipped median in output.
    - GAL_STATISTICS_CLIP_OUTCOL_MAD: index of clipped MAD in output.
    - GAL_STATISTICS_CLIP_OUTCOL_NUMBER_CLIPS: index of clipped number 
in output.
    - GAL_STATISTICS_CLIP_OUTCOL_OPTIONAL_MEAN: bit flag for measuring 
mean.
    - GAL_STATISTICS_CLIP_OUTCOL_OPTIONAL_STD: bit flag for measuring STD.
    - GAL_STATISTICS_CLIP_OUTCOL_OPTIONAL_MAD: bit flag for measuring MAD.

** Removed features
** Changed features
*** Arithmetic
  - Binary operators (like '+' or 'x') that are given two integers will
    crash with an error if the input operands have the same width but
    different signs. Until now, they would just report a warning and print
    the output. However, in large scripts, users could miss the warning and
    not be aware of a possibly wrong result. Therefore it is more robust to
    crash with an error rather than print a warning. This was suggested by
    Sepideh Eskandarlou and implemented by Faezeh Bidjarchian after a poll
    on Gnuastro's Matrix chat channel (#gnuastro:openastronomy.org).

*** Library
  - GAL_STATISTICS_CLIP_MAX_CONVERGE: new name for the old
    'GAL_STATISTICS_SIG_CLIP_MAX_CONVERGE'. Since we now also have
    MAD-clipping.
  - gal_statistics_clip_sigma: new name for 'gal_statistics_sigma_clip'.

** Bugs fixed
  - bug #64852: astscript-zeropoint: crash when input is in 0-th HDU;
    reported by 'danc' in https://savannah.gnu.org/support/?110952; fixed
    by Sepideh Eskandarlou.
  - bug #64915: Segment's SKY_STD output HDU does not have WCS; reported by
    Sepideh Eskandarlou.
  - bug #64952: Table error message for incorrect column name was not
    complete; reported by Sepideh Eskandarlou.
  - bug #65005: astscript-psf-unit not accounting for --innerhdu; reported
    by Ignacio Ruiz Cejudo.
  - bug #65050: Use --libtool option in the TEMPLATE usage; found and fixed
    by Faezeh Bidjarchian.
  - bug #65055: Columns of empty FITS tables (with no rows) read in 
reverse.





[3] Lzip has better compression ratio and archival features compared
to the '.gz' or '.xz' formats. Therefore Gnuastro's alpha/test
releases are only in this format. If you don't have Lzip (you can
check with `lzip --version' command), download and install it from its
webpage:

  https://www.nongnu.org/lzip/lzip.html

If Lzip is present and you use GNU Tar, then the single command below
should uncompress and un-pack the tarball:

  $ tar xf gnuastro-0.21.43-3101.tar.lz

If the command above doesn't work, you have to un-compress and un-pack
it with two separate commands (or use a pipe to feed the output of the
first into the second: `lzip -cd gnuastro-0.21.43-3101.tar.lz | tar
-xf -'):

  $ lzip -d gnuastro-0.21.43-3101.tar.lz
  $ tar xf gnuastro-0.21.43-3101.tar





[4] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the .sig
suffix) is intact. First, be sure to download both the .sig file and the
corresponding tarball. Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify gnuastro-0.21.43-3101.tar.lz.sig

The signature should match the fingerprint of the following key:

  pub   rsa4096 2018-12-08 [SC]
        52B0 4484 D806 C90D CB52  7249 71E8 9901 2D17 4B66
  uid           [ unknown] Mohammad Akhlaghi <mohammad@akhlaghi.org>

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key, or
that public key has expired, try the following commands to retrieve or
refresh it, and then rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

  gpg --recv-keys 71E899012D174B66

As a last resort to find the key, you can try the official GNU keyring:

  wget -q https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-keyring.gpg
  gpg --keyring gnu-keyring.gpg --verify gnuastro-0.21.43-3101.tar.lz.sig





[5] This tarball was bootstrapped (created) with the tools below. Note that
you don't need these to build Gnuastro from the tarball, these are the
tools that were used to make the tarball itself. They are only mentioned
here to be able to reproduce/recreate this tarball later.

  Texinfo 7.1
  Autoconf 2.71
  Automake 1.16.5
  Help2man 1.49.3
  ImageMagick 7.1.1-24
  Gnulib v0.1-6958-g811698980f
  Autoconf archives v2023.02.20-29-g5001091

The dependencies to build Gnuastro from this tarball on your system are
described here:

  https://www.gnu.org/s/gnuastro/manual/html_node/Dependencies.html





[6] To get the base64 SHA256 checksum, you can use the command below
(assuming you already have the 'openssl' command-line program).


  cat gnuastro-0.21.43-3101.tar.lz \
      | openssl dgst -binary -sha256 | openssl base64 -A


























==================================================================


Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify gnuastro-0.21.43-3101.tar.lz.sig

The signature should match the fingerprint of the following key:

  pub   rsa4096 2018-12-08 [SC]
        52B0 4484 D806 C90D CB52  7249 71E8 9901 2D17 4B66
  uid           [ unknown] Mohammad Akhlaghi <mohammad@akhlaghi.org>

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
or that public key has expired, try the following commands to retrieve
or refresh it, and then rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

  gpg --recv-keys 71E899012D174B66

As a last resort to find the key, you can try the official GNU
keyring:

  wget -q https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-keyring.gpg
  gpg --keyring gnu-keyring.gpg --verify gnuastro-0.21.43-3101.tar.lz.sig

m51-color.jpg
Description: JPEG image

gnuastro-citations-per-year.png
Description: PNG image