Software for Generating Mosaics of Astronomical Images

Software is being developed to "stitch" together multiple astronomical images of small, adjacent patches of the sky into a single mosaic image of a large portion of the sky. These mosaics make data from large areas of the sky readily available for efficient viewing of many types of celestial objects and large-scale structure in the sky that are not apparent on a smaller scale. This software can be run on both single-processor computers and multiprocessor systems. The input patch image data can be of any type, resolution, coordinate system, and projection consistent with the Flexible Image Transport System (FITS), which is a commonly used astronomical data format. The software uses information in FITS headers to reproject the input image data into a common coordinate system and then to translate the data into the output mosaic at a resolution and in a coordinate system specified by the user. This software is part of a "Virtual Observatory" system being developed for analysis and display of astronomical images and catalogs.