The 35th annual conference on Astronomical Data Analysis Software & Systems 2025 in Görlitz, Germany

Optical survey imaging in FITS files often exceeds the screen size of image viewers. To inspect such data, users can either traverse the image or zoom out. Manual traversal risks uneven or incomplete image inspection, subject to the controls available in the image viewer. Zooming out compromises image detail. A solution to these drawbacks is segmenting images into smaller pieces fitting within a user's screen, allowing inspection in slideshow fashion. Shell script metaprogramming invocation of SAOImageDS9 to perform such FITS segmentation is presented. The solution infrastructure is simple, needing only DS9 and a Linux or macOS shell to run.
Emission line objects can be discovered in optical imaging by combining narrowband and broadband data. Such combination might be subtractive, for difference imaging, or additive via different colour channels of an image viewer. Interleaving different combinations for blink comparison was applied to planetary nebula candidate identification, illustrating the scripts' utility in semi-automating astronomical discovery.