<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Hi All!</span><div class=""><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br class=""></span></div><div class=""><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">We are pleased to announce the release of </span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Iris</span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"> 3.0beta1. </span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Iris</span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"> is a desktop application for exploring and analysing Spectra and Spectral Energy distributions within the Virtual Observatory.</span><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">In version 3.0b1, </span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Iris</span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"> has undergone a round of plastic surgery, with a full overhaul on the Visualizer, Metadata Browser, and Fitting Tool.</span><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">This round of deep infrastructure changes will allow us to fix many bugs and to significantly improve </span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Iris</span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">' functionality, and we believe the overall user experience has already signficantly improved with this beta release.</span><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">High-resoultion spectra can now be plotted and fitted.</span><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">The Fitting Tool now encapsulates the models, parameter values, fitting options, and fit statistics in one window, significantly improving the user experience.</span><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">The Visualizer now uses the flexible and powerful STILTS plotting API as its plotting backend. </span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Iris</span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"> internals, in particular the new Metadata Browser and the Visualizer, are now heavily based on STIL -- the library both TOPCAT and STILTS use. This allows </span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Iris</span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"> to be more efficient and allows us to be able to add more and more scientific features to </span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Iris</span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"> in the future.</span><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Sherpa's reliability makes it the </span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Iris</span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"> trusted fitting engine in this version as well. </span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Iris</span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"> 3.0beta1 relies on Sherpa v4.8, so to get the latest official bug fixes and improvements.</span><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">You will still be able to access NED and ASDC data services through </span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Iris</span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">' dedicated clients. With </span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Iris</span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"> 3.0beta1 we are also introducing a dedicated client for the Vizier photometry service in Strasbourg.</span><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">For a full list of the changes introduced in </span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Iris</span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"> 3.0beta1 and instructions on how to install this new version of </span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Iris</span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">, please refer to the following documentation page: </span><a href="http://cxc.cfa.harvard.edu/iris/v2.1/3.0b1-release.html" target="_blank" class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">http://cxc.cfa.harvard.edu/iri<wbr class="">s/v2.1/3.0b1-release.html</a><span class="gmail-im" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"></span><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Note that there are some known caveats and bugs listed in the page above. This is a beta release, so some edges might still need to be rounded.</span><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">We hope you will enjoy </span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Iris</span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"> 3.0beta1. Please feel free to contact us with any issues, questions, suggestions, bug reports, or test feedback: </span><a href="mailto:irisdev@cfa.harvard.edu" target="_blank" class=""><font size="2" class="">irisdev@cfa.harvard.edu</font></a><div class=""><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Best Regards,</span><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">The </span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Iris</span><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;"> Team</span><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="" style="font-size: 12.8px;">(Omar, Jamie, & Janet)</span></div></div></body></html>