*************************************************************************** IERS Message No. 9 April 24, 2001 *************************************************************************** First Release of the SOFA Software Libraries The IAU's SOFA (Standards Of Fundamental Astronomy) initiative seeks to promulgate an authoritative set of fundamental-astronomy constants and algorithms. The work is carried out by a panel called the SOFA Review Board, the membership of which was agreed just prior to the 1997 General Assembly. The Board is pleased to announce that a first release of software is now available. The SOFA software libraries are a collection of subprograms, in source-code form, that implement official IAU algorithms for fundamental-astronomy computations. The subprograms at present comprise 27 "astronomy" routines supported by 52 "vector/matrix" routines, all written in Fortran. In future releases, the astronomy library will expand, and implementations in other languages will be introduced. For further details please see the SOFA Center's website at http://www.iau-sofa.rl.ac.uk/. --------------------------------------------------------------- Dennis D. McCarthy dmc@maia.usno.navy.mil Director, Directorate of Time phone: (202) 762-1837 U.S. Naval Observatory fax: (202) 762-1563 Washington, DC 20392-5420 ***************************************************************************