Montage for Windows
Montage can be installed on Windows as a set of EXE files, one per Montage module. These are intended for invocation from the command-line via programs such as the Windows Command Prompt or PowerShell, or from scripts. The command syntax in Windows is identical to that in Linux. The following modules do not build under Windows: mHdr, mArchiveList, and mArchiveGet.
Installation
Montage installs via a standard Windows installer, "montageinstall.exe", available for download here. Double click to install the Montage executable images in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Montage\". There is, however, one tricky part to the installation. In order to be able to use the modules easily, you need to get the above directory in your Windows PATH. This can be done with a simple command:
setx PATH "%PATH%;C:\Program Files (x86)\Montage\"
However, setx truncates strings that are longer than 1024 characters. If you know your path is shorter than 1024 characters (see it by entering "echo %PATH%" in a shell program), enter the above command to change the path permanently. A safer approach is to edit the PATH with the Windows Control Panel, which has a GUI environment editor (in the System folder) that does not have the 1024 character limitation.
Example Use
Montage can work with any standard FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) files. This format is used universally in the astronomical community. In this example, we retrieve (without further explanation for now) a set of images from the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) covering the source M17 in the Galactic plane. We then proceed to reproject all the images, analyze and adjust the backgrounds so they can be mosaicked together, coadd the results and generate a PNG image of the region.
[NOTE: The line breaks in the wget URL and mViewer command below are for readability; these should be on one line when you enter them.]
This example uses "wget" to run a remote web service vi URL. If you don't have or don't want to install wget you can enter the URL into a browser and save the result to the "archivelist.bat" file. The same service can be driven through a browser form at http://montage.ipac.caltech.edu/applications/ArchiveList/. You can of course also use your favorite method for downloading images from an archive.
rmdir raw projected diffs corrected
mkdir raw projected diffs corrected
del region.hdr
del rimages.tbl
del pimages.tbl
del cimages.tbl
del stats.tbl
del diffs.tbl
del fits.tbl
del corrections.tbl
cd raw
wget -O archivelist.bat "http://montage.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/ArchiveList/
nph-archivelist?survey=2MASS&location=M17
&size=0.7&units=deg&band=J"
archivelist.bat
move region.hdr ..
cd ..
mImgtbl raw rimages.tbl
mProjExec -q -X -p raw rimages.tbl region.hdr projected stats.tbl
mImgtbl projected pimages.tbl
mOverlaps pimages.tbl diffs.tbl
mDiffFitExec -p projected diffs.tbl region.hdr diffs fits.tbl
mBgModel -a pimages.tbl fits.tbl corrections.tbl
mBgExec -p projected pimages.tbl corrections.tbl corrected
mImgtbl corrected cimages.tbl
mAdd -p corrected cimages.tbl region.hdr mosaic.fits
mViewer -color blue -grid equ j2000 -ct 1
-gray mosaic.fits -2s max gaussian-log -out mosaic.png
The first time you try this, you should probably run each command manually. When you are more familiar with the software you can turn this into a script, for instance with the location and region size as input parameters.
If your research uses Montage, please include the following acknowledgement: "This research made use of Montage. It is funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number ACI-1440620, and was previously funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Earth Science Technology Office, Computation Technologies Project, under Cooperative Agreement Number NCC5-626 between NASA and the California Institute of Technology."
The Montage distribution includes an adaptation of the MOPEX algorithm developed at the Spitzer Science Center.
