A Visualization Software for the Radio Sky and Radio-Source Distribution

Directions of radio sources and the Galactic radio background map need to be known before or during practical radio-astronomy observing runs. We have developed a simple visualization software to display the radio sky and the distribution of radio sources. The visualization software, which should be helpful to observers, is developed using the C language and the PGPLOT subroutine library for graphic utilities. It can be run under a Linux environment. This software can be used to display the radio sky at any user-set time; particularly, it can display the real-time radio sky. It allows users to add or remove observational sites, to select desired data of the Galactic radio background, and to modify object entries in radio-source lists for display. This software has rather good expandability. The software together with its source codes will be made freely available to all astronomical institutes and amateur astronomers in China.