Who is responsible for SAOtng?

SAOtng (SAOimage: The Next Generation) is an astronomical display program being developed cooperatively by Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) and the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (NOAO). An updated replacement for the highly popular SAOimage display program, SAOtng uses the NOAO widget server and the X Public Access (XPA) mechanism to provide open software capabilities for users and developers alike.

Many people have contributed to the development of SAOtng, including:

Alberto Accomazzi (SAO)

Alberto developed the FITS to PostScript programs used by SAOtng to print/display/save PostScript versions of the displayed image.

Mike Fitzpatrick (NOAO)

Mike was of tremendous help during the release phase of our work. He (and NOAO) supplied platforms on which to build releases and lent his expertise in diagnosing IRAF-related issues on these platforms. If your binary distribution works right out of the box, thank Mike.

William Joye (SAO)

Bill has done significant work on color support in SAOtng. He also is working on line graphics and markers support.

Eric Mandel (SAO)

Eric is the architect for SAOtng. He wrote most of the SAOtng-specific code and co-developed the X Public Access mechanism, on which SAOtng is based.

Doug Mink (SAO)

Doug contributed the World Coordinate System transformation libraries.

Saleem Mukhtar (JPL)

Saleem dug into region markers and coordinates and made them work reliably. He encouraged the development of line and polygon markers and had a hand in many other features in SAOtng. Saleem also has pushed for consistency and esthetics in the GUI.

Frank Primini (SAO)

Frank made sure that all-important pixel values and positions were correct, and did other initial testing and evaluation of the program.

John Roll (SAO)

John developed the fitsy library that gives us FITS binary table and image extension support. And he did a whole host of other things, too numerous to remember (parameter interface, XPA support, general advice ...)

Dennis Schmidt (SAO)

Dennis developed part of the SAOtng GUI having to do with region markers.

Ralph Swick (The X Consortium)

Ralph is a co-developer of the X Public Access mechanism.

Doug Tody (NOAO)

Doug wrote the OBM widget server and ximtool, an image display program for the IRAF analysis environment which forms the basis for SAOtng.

Alexey Vikhlinin (IKI)

Alexey quietly pointed out areas where SAOtng needed improvement, especially with regard to FITS performance issues. Whenever SAOtng puts up a FITS image quickly, thank Alexey!

Last Updated May 29, 1998