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Analyzing Astronomical Data With AIPS++

© Adam Hughes

In the world of computer science in general, and scientific computing, good software is never good enough and cutting-edge techniques are never sharp enough. It's little wonder, then that most popular software titles exist in scores of different versions, and someone is always trying to take it to the next level. We saw last week that AIPS (Astronomical Image Processing System) has been the standard for radio telescopy data processing for some twenty years. This stalwart track record, though, doesn't exempt it from the powerful trends in computer science. As evidence, witness the development of AIPS++ (Astronomical Information Processing System).

The AIPS++ project represents a collaboration of many researchers working at several different institutions. A look at their mission statement gives us a great idea of what AIPS++ is all about. The specific support goals which relate to telescope type and methodology is beyond this discussion, but they are clearly quite ambitious. What's interesting for us is the way in which AIPS++ ties together many of the tenets of modern scientific computing.

Firstly, AIPS++ is written primarily in C++, an object-oriented programming language. This means that AIPS++ users and ] programmers can automatically take advantage of such concepts as inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism. These ideas make it much easier to develop a specific module to be added to the whole than would be the case with a procedural language such as Fortran or C. On the other hand, AIPS++ provides interfaces to make it possible to link up with existing code written in these languages. These implementation details should make AIPS++ easy to build upon and maintain, as well as extensible to other applications, perhaps including general purpose scientific visualization.

Secondly, AIPS++ is designed to make the user's experience as rewarding as possible. A core set of applications is included in each release, and the parameters of these applications may be changed interactively and dynamically as needed by the user. In addition, AIPS++ attempts to establish one data format for input/output operations, thus simplifying movement from one set of calculations to another.

Finally, AIPS++ aims to provide functionality at least on par with existing telescopy applications, eventually surpassing them, while providing several options for viewing full product documentation.

Overall AIPS++ embodies many of the principles of effective scientific computing, and it should be interesting to see where the researchers' efforts lead in the coming years. For more information, visit the AIPS++ web site at

http://aips2.aoc.nrao.edu/docs/aips++.ht...

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