Download

SAOImageDS9 is released annually, with beta versions (denoted as b1, b2, etc.) available for download between major releases.

Expand each section to view the currently supported operating system versions.

NOTE: If Chrome users have problems downloading from this page they can go to https://ds9.si.edu/download/ directly

Version 8.8

01 October 2026

Release Notes

Linux

Debian

OpenSUSE

Fedora

Ubuntu

CentOS

Arch

Manjaro

Rocky Linux

Flatpak

DS9 is also available as a Flatpak for both Intel and ARM processors.

flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists ds9 https://ds9.si.edu/download/flatpak/saoimageds9.flatpakrepo

flatpak install edu.si.ds9 -y

After installation, SAOImageDS9 will be available in your Applications menu. You can also run it from the terminal command line using

alias ds9="flatpak run edu.si.ds9"

ds9 -version

MacOS

Ports of SAOImageDS9 for MacOS

SAOImageDS9 for the Mac Operating System is released in two ports:

as an Aqua application (the graphical user interface native to MacOS)
as a Darwin X11 application (requires XQuartz to run).

There is no operational difference between the two ports and it is just a matter of preference.

The Aqua port is installed by the normal MacOS method of downloading a disk image, double clicking on the file, and click and drag the application into the /Applications directory.

The X11 port is installed by downloading a tarball archive, unpacking the file:

% tar -xvzf darwin-universal.<version>.tar.gz

and moving 2 files, ds9 and ds9.zip into a directory that is in your shell PATH variable, such as your local bin directory:

% mv ds9 ds9.zip $HOME/bin/.

General users can install the Aqua version which does not require any additional software.

If you need to use command line options, install the Darwin X11 version

As of 8.8b2, SAOImageDS9 is released as a "universal" binary for the two different kinds of processors in Mac computers: Intel processors (2020 and before) or Apple Silicon processors (2020 and after).

IMPORTANT- READ ME

The installation for several versions may show warnings about "unknown developer" or "damaged application". If this is the case after the installation run the following command at the prompt in a Terminal window:

X11 installation:

xattr -c $HOME/bin/ds9

Aqua installation:

xattr -c /Applications/SAOImageDS9.app

MacOS Aqua Intel Sequoia Users: If you receive the following error message;

"The application “Finder” does not have permission to open “(null)”."

Please run the following commands at the prompt in a Terminal window

codesign --remove-signature /Applications/SAOImageDS9.app

codesign --force --deep --sign - /Applications/SAOImageDS9.app

AQUA

macOS 12+ (Universal)

X11 (requires XQuartz)

macOS 12+ (Universal)

Windows

Windows 64 bit

Source

Release Notes

XPA Version 2.2.1

25 August 2026

Linux

MacOS

macOS 12+ Universal

Affiliated Packages

PyDS9

The pyds9 module uses a Python interface to XPA to communicate with DS9. This includes not only sending data and settings to DS9, but also retrieving them into Python.

GitHub

ds9samp

The ds9samp module uses a Python interface to SAMP to communicate with DS9. This includes not only sending data and settings to DS9, but also retrieving them into Python.

GitHub

DAX

DAX, the Ds9 Analysis eXtensions, is a collection of CIAO tasks that have been integrated using DS9's analysis menu interface. DAX provides users access to many mission independent CIAO tools and applications using a simplified graphical user interface.

With DAX users can perform various image processing operations (eg adaptive and non-linear smoothing), compute net counts and fluxes, perform source detection, and even modeling and fitting of spectra and 2D images using Sherpa.

Documentation

PyDS9plugin

A python DS9 extension for quicklook processing of astronomical images. This highly interactive extension can be generalized automatically to a set of images to turn the plug-in into a real time multi-processing pipeline.

GitHub

Documentation

Image::DS9

Image::DS9 - A perl interface to the DS9 image display and analysis program.

Documentation

Funtools

Funtools is a "minimal buy-in" FITS library and utility package.

GitHub