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<a class="headsubtitle" href="munipack.html">A general astronomical image processing software</a>
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<h1>About History Of Munipack</h1>

<p><i>DRAFT</i></p>

<p class="abstract">
Munipack is a general astronomical image processing software focused on processing
of any kind of observed image data. The processing is like a art of data processing
and Munipack is a tool in hands of experineced astronomer.
</p>

<h2>Early Era</h2>

<p>
A processing of astronomical images is one from the most exciting parts of the 
observational astronomy. But the relevant processing of the tusand of images is 
also the most difficult task for scientists. Since 1998, I'm working on developing
of a system for automarise the processing and on fully automated
algorithms for that purpose. I started from the famous DAOPHOT II
package by P. B. Stetson. The name Munipack is inspired 
by DAOPHOT, P.B. Stetson wroted DAOPHOT at Dominion 
Astrophysical Observatory therefore I use Munipack
originated from my alma mater, Masaryk University in Brno. Note,
that T.G. Masaryk was a first Czech(oslovak) democratic 
president. I thinks, that names like Hrophot are not suitable for the case. 
</p>

<p>
The CCD photomtery is a art of data processing. Any
algorithm (Munipack's component or another) can 
diminantly help of this processing but it must be used
with naximum warranty. Are you a astronomical photometry 
guru?

</p>

<p>
Munipack project has been started by me in Masaryk University at 1996. A primary idea
has been to prepare a batch processing software for huge amount of our CCD data.
As the photometry core, the source codes of DAOPHOT II implemented by Midas, has 
been selected. Just star detection and the aperture photometry routines
has been used, for reason, that ones did not required any user interaction, 
the key feature for non-iterative analysis. 
</p>

<p>
The original code has been arranged to work as a separate tool (without Midas 
environment). Parameters and data files has been not altered (ones are identical
to obsolete 0.4.2 version).
</p>

<p>
The core of the Munipack package - muniphot - is based on the
world-wide known code DAOPHOT by the P. B. Stetson. Nevertheless,
the munipack was rewritten from Fortran 77 language to Fortran 90
and its robust mean estimator was coded from the scratch.
The methods for the mean were described in book:
</p>

<p>
Muniphot is less general the DAOPHOT.
DAOPHOT uses aperture and PSF photometry, but muniphot only aperture
photometry. The differences between both utilities will be on a crowded
field greather then on a sparse. The photmetry with munipack of the stars
in a globular cluster or supernovae on the background of a galaxy
is probbably bad idea. This is work for DAOPHOT. The processing
of a few hundred images of your favourite variable star in
Ursa Major is typical use of the munipack.
</p>

<h2>Developing of additional utilities</h2>
<p>
Some utilities has been implemented to provide additional facility for extraction
of light curves of variable stars from the images. The matching of
star lists has provided a way to find an affine transformation between images
and vice versa. The routines had enabled construction of light curves. Also
basic image reduction (dark and flat corrections) has been added. The work has 
been published under both Unix (Linux and Solaris) and MS-DOS operating systems 
during 1997.
</p>

<h2>Under DOS</h2>
<p>
My friend Rudolf Novak wrote DOS/WIN port of the prehistorical
version of Munipack named MUNIDOS. This package contains
main components for photometry and additional routines
for user friendly interface. Many people reports MUNIDOS as
new DOS clone (like MSDOS, DRDOS or FreeDOS). On base it,
we (I) omiting this name. Therefore, MUNIDOS still lives.
It is maintainted by the Lukas Kral.
</p>

<h2>Robust Algorithms and Fortran 90</h2>
<p>
1998 and 2000 improvements included the creation of a robust flat-field routine
from series of flat-fields (using mean and sigma normalization). 
Some important improvements in algorithms has been realized: The main part
of code has been arranged for Fortran 90 compilers. The implementation 
has been changed to use of dynamical arrays, routines has been rewrote 
to use memory instead of disk-buffers and massive speed up has been preformed. 
Robust algorithms with non-Gaussian distributions replaced the original 
DAOPHOT's filtering and cutting methods (while the methods has shown 
the right way to determine results).
</p>

<h2>Long Bug-fixing</h2>
<p>
The 2000-late improvements included image collecting utilities which
provides composition of images and deep-field imaging and precise photometry
of combined images. The period has been characterized by a slow progress,
bug-fixing and perfecting of the application.
</p>

<h2>Graphical interfaces</h2>
<p>
The new era of Munipack started on begin of 2009 when the plan for GUI,
modernization and improvements has been started. As the part of the work,
you can read this sentences.
</p>

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Copyright &copy; 1997 – 2018
Filip Hroch (<a style="text-decoration: none" href="mailto:hroch@physics.muni.cz?Subject=Munipack" title="Author's Email">✉</a>), license <a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html">GPLv3</a>.
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munipack-doc 0.5.10-1 / usr / share / doc / munipack / history.html
