match v0.8 - by Michael W. Richmond (C)opyright 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, Michael W. Richmond, all rights reserved This package contains software to match one list of objects against another list, allowing for arbitrary translation, rotation, scaling, and some distortion. The code is designed specifically for astronomical data: list of stars or galaxies. There is a small "pre-processor" to put astronomical data into the proper format for matching, and a "post-processor" to apply a transformation to the astronomical coordinates in a list. Most of the real work is done by the "match" program itself. The idea behind the matching of lists is to form a set of triangles from the points in each list, and look for similar triangles. The algorithm is described at length in the article "FOCAS Automatic Catalog Matching Algorithms", by Francisco Valdes et al., in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, volume 107, page 1119 (1995). See the following URL (which should all be entered on one line) http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query? bibcode=1995PASP..107.1119V&db_key=AST&high=39463d35aa24090 INSTALLATION Follow the standard installation procedure: - uncompress the gzip'ed tar archive - cd match-0.6 - ./configure - make If your system has Perl installed, you can run a quick self-test: - make check The test assumes that Perl is located in /usr/bin/perl. If it's somewhere else, simply type - perl selftest.pl See the documentation in "match.html" for a description of the programs, the input and output formats, etc. REQUIREMENTS The software is written in ANSI C, and requires nothing beyond the standard math library. The selftest script is written in Perl; it works with Perl 5, but fails with Perl 4. NOTES The pre- and post-processing steps assume that celestial coordinates are expressed in decimal degrees, not sexigesimal notation. That is, this: 233.0082 not this: 15:32:01.9 Incorporating support for sexigesimal notation is probably a Good Idea for some future release.