GNU Astronomy Utilities, commonly known as Gnuastro, is a collection of command-line programs and libraries for manipulating and analysing astronomical data.
The individual programs share a consistent command-line interface, making it easier to combine multiple operations into larger processing pipelines. Gnuastro works extensively with FITS data and provides facilities for examining and modifying FITS extensions and headers, converting data between formats, cropping images, manipulating tables, performing arithmetic and statistical operations, matching catalogues and processing astronomical images.
One of its better-known components is NoiseChisel, which detects faint and diffuse structures embedded in noise without relying on the conventional approach of detecting objects above a fixed signal-to-noise threshold. MakeCatalog can subsequently calculate measurements from labelled images. Other components perform convolution, image warping, cosmological calculations and profile generation.
Gnuastro is not restricted to its supplied executables. It includes a library for developing custom astronomical software, while BuildProgram simplifies compiling programs against Gnuastro and its dependencies.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Manipulate and analyse astronomical datasets from the command line.
- View and modify FITS extensions and header keywords.
- Detect faint and diffuse structures with NoiseChisel.
- Generate catalogues from labelled astronomical images.
- Crop, convolve, warp and convert image data.
- Table processing, statistics and arithmetic operations.
- Library for developing custom astronomical programs.
Website: gnu.org/software/gnuastro
Support:
Developer: Mohammad Akhlaghi
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
Gnuastro is written primarily in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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