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# 1. Introduction

Work on this program is motivated by author's personal interest in asteroid and comet observations. First release of `fitsblink` was introduced to TASS group (http://www.tass-survey.org) in November 1996 as a simple tool for FITS image display and blinking. Later, functionality of the program was tuned to needs of the comet and asteroid observation program, which is ongoing at the Crni Vrh Observatory.

This program attempts to be rather user friendly and intuitive. Unfortunately, you still need to know what you are doing. In particular, you should know what astrometry is and have some sense to detect wrong results, which may appear due to bad choice of parameters used for star detection and star matching.

`Fitsblink` may be freely distributed and used. You are not allowed to sell it or to distribute changed program under the same name. You can make your own version, but give it a different name. If you use large parts of the source in some other program, a proper credit should be given in the source file.

I always welcome comments, suggestions and bug reports concerning `fitsblink`. Note that I do not work on this program professionally so the activity is limited to times when the pressure from my job decreases a little. I will certainly try to fix any serious bugs that may affect the intended functionality of the program as soon as possible. As for suggestions for extended functionality, I will consider them for the next burst of activity if they fit into my concept of the program.

I would like to thank Bojan Dintinjana from the Astronomical-Geophysical Observatory Golovec for his nice color palette and helpful suggestions and Herman Mikuz (AGO and Crni Vrh Observatory) for the example images.

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