CARTA forges ahead with a new beta release. As there is now a stable codebase, the CARTA team is confident to release beta versions for astronomers to use. The beta server (https://carta-beta.idia.ac.za) has now been upgraded to the latest public beta release (v3.0.0-beta1). Highlights of this release include:
- A new multi-panel view, which allows multiple images to be viewed side by side. Click the cog button in the image widget to configure it.
- A new customizable colorbar to the image view widget, with an interactive mode that highlights pixels above a threshold.
- An experimental JavaScript-based code snippets feature has been added, for scripting CARTA from the frontend. Snippets can be saved, edited and re-executed. The feature can be enabled in the preferences dialog.
- The last directory can now be preserved across CARTA sessions (see preferences dialog)
- Significant performance improvements when using HDF5 files with mipmapped data (look in the CARTA file browser’s file info tab for Has mipmaps = T).
- Support for compressed FITS images (fits.gz and .fz files)
Please see the CARTA v3.0-beta1 quick guide for more information on how to use these new features. Please remember to cite CARTA in your papers: ADS link; DOI 10.5281/zenodo.3377984
This is an untested beta release, but we would love to get feedback on the latest features (either via GitHub or the CARTA support helpdesk). For IDIA/ilifu specific inquiries, please contact support@ilifu.ac.za.