Image Servers in C

To access an image server, you should also include the astroCatalog.h header file 1 :

 
#include "astroCatalog.h" 
AC_Handle cat = acOpen(imageServerName); 
if (!cat) { 
    error(...); 
} 
	... 
filename = acGetImage(cat, ra_center, dec_center, width, height); 
if (filename == NULL) { 
    error(...); 
}

The acOpen routine returns the handle for the image server. The acGetImage routine takes as parameters the handle, the world coordinates (in degrees, as doubles), the width and height in arc minutes of the image to be retrieved. The return value is the name of a temporary file containing the FITS image retrieved from the server. The file should be copied if necessary, since it will be rewritten in the next call to acGetImage .

1. The astroImage interface is still available, but is now obsolete. The astroCatalog interface contains the same functionality now and should be used in its place.