JSky - Java Components for Astronomy

The aim of the JSky project is to build a collection of reusable Java components for use in astronomy. The project originally grew out of the development of the Skycat application at ESO and a first draft of the design ideas were presented at the ADASS'99 conference. JSky was originally developed at ESO and then later as part of the Gemini Observing Tool , which astronomers use to plan their observations at the Gemini Telescope.

The main application in JSky is called jskycat and this release provides installation packages for Linux (rpm), Mac OS X (dmg) and Windows (exe) as well as a generic java installation.

The JSky package currently contains java classes for displaying astronomical images, searching astronomical catalogs and plotting catalog symbols on images. In addition, there are classes that support drawing on an image and working with the World Coordinate System (WCS). Recently, support has been added for overlaying a WCS grid on an image, accessing Virtual Observatory (VO) services and communicating with other applications via SAMP or PLASTIC.

You are welcome to download JSky and try it yourself. Feel free to use sourceforge.net's bug and feature reporting systems.

Have fun!