Links to other Astronomy and IDL related sites

General IDL Resources

General Information about IDL from ITT Visual Information Solutions (formerly RSI).

ITT Visual Information solutions is the manufacturer of IDL , and this is the Web site to obtain a summary of IDL functionality, information about pricing and supported machines, or to download an IDL demo. The site also contains a section of tutorials , IDL Tech Tips , Web seminars on using IDL, and a User contributed library of routines. The IDL V6.4 documentation is available online

IDL Forums

The main forum for discussion and questions about the IDL language is the Usenet newsgroup comp.lang.idl-pvwave . ITTVIS also maintains a less active User forum . Frequently asked questions (FAQ) about IDL are probably most likely to be answered in one of the several hundred (!) IDL Programming Tips and Tricks and IDL Bug reports available in David Fanning's Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming.

Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming

The first place to look for tips on IDL programming is this large and well-maintained website from independent IDL consultant David Fanning. Also includes a collection of user reports on IDL anomalies, and over 100 very useful IDL utility procedures. The RSS feed provides useful details about updates to the Library. David is also the author of the book IDL Programming Techniques

IDL Plotting Widgets:

Several groups have written IDL widgets to allow interactive manipulation of a plot. David Fanning's MPI_PLOT package is a object-oriented interactive wrapper for many PLOT keywords. The FUSE group in Paris has written Xiplot (V2.17 May 2006) which can read a FITS binary table and allows some spectral manipulation. The function_1d.pro program in the TARA package includes fitting and shifting procedures. The well-documented plotting widget GRAFFER by James Tappin (U. of Birmingham), last updated (Version 3.0.4) January 2009.

ICG (Institute for Chemistry and Dynamic of the Geosphere) Library 

This large library of IDL programs at the ForschungsZentrum Jülich in Germany includes procedures for conversion of IDL variables and structures into html code, plotting, programming tools, widgets, and a interface to a facsimile differential equation solver for chemical reactions. Version 6.03 was released in March 2006.

JHU (Johns Hopkins U.) APL/S1R IDL Information Page

Ray Sterner runs this Web site at the JHU Applied Physics Laboratory which includes several IDL tutorials, and a pointer to the large JHU/APL/S1R IDL Library. Last updated 12 Sep 2007.

Ken Bowman's IDL page

Ken Bowman (Texas A&M) is the author of the book An Introduction to Programming with IDL for beginning programmers. This site includes example programs from the book and tips and tricks for using IDL with Mac OS X.

Rob Dimeo's IDL Library

This IDL library the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is particularly useful for PAN a general-purpose curve fitting utility with a graphical user interface (last updated May 2005), an IDL implementation of a genetic algorithm, and a visualization of 1d quantum dynamics (last updated July 2007). There is also an IDL course manual providing an introduction to widget and object programming

Epsilon.Nought

This site is maintained by Andreas Reigber as a resource about radar remote sensing. Besides IDL software for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), it includes a general IDL library which contains tools to extend IDL capabilities in linear algebra and Fourier transforms.

Michael Galloy's Resources for IDL Developers

This readable blog by a former RSI instructor and consultant discusses IDL (and non-IDL) techniques for visualization and information design. Michael Galloy also maintains IDLDOC , a utility for producing documentation for any valid IDL code, and . mgunit a framework for unit testing for IDL.

Liam Gumley's IDL Library

This IDL library at the University of Wisconsin includes procedures for handling colors, pointers, binary I/O, and image display. Last updated 28 August 2000. Liam has also written a book about Practical IDL Programming

Mark Hadfield's Motley IDL Library

This IDL library at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand includes several Object Graphics classes, a base class for widget applications and several applications built on it, functions that make it easy to represent scaled data on axes, classes for accessing netCDF files and several utility routines. Last updated June 2007.

Ronn Kling Consulting

This site is probably most useful for its C code available as DLM (dynamically linked modules) to enhance IDL capabilities. Ronn Kling is the author of the books Application Development with IDL, Calling C from IDL, Power Graphics with IDL, and most recently Navigating the IDL Workbench An introduction to the new IDL 7.0 Development Environment

Craig Markwardt's IDL Library

This IDL library at the University of Wisconsin includes many well-documented plotting, utility, ephemeris, mathematics and robust curve-fitting procedures. Last updated 05 May 2009.

Mathew Craig's TeXtoIDL Software

This software translates the TeX character set into the (often obscure) IDL plotting symbol codes. Updated June 2004.

Pavel Romashkin's IDL Library

This IDL library includes a 2-D plotting DISPLAY widget (last updated May 2003).

David Windt's IDL Library

This IDL library at Reflective X-ray Optics LLC includes procedures for plotting, curve fitting, and image analysis. Also includes IMD, a widget tool for analysis of optical multilayers. Last updated September 2000

IDLWAVE - Gnu IDL Emacs Mode

The Emacs mode for IDL is maintained by JD Smith at the University of Arizona. Version 6.1 was released in June 2007 and is included in Emacs 22.

IDL Wavelet Software:

IDL includes a wavelet toolkit Christopher Torrence and Gilbert Campo have written a Practical Guide to Wavelet Analysis with applications in geophysics, and include some IDL software. Multi Resolutions Ltd. sells a software package for Multiresolution Analysis which includes about 5000 lines of IDL code. Note that IDL has an optional Wavelet Toolkit.

Commercial Add-ons

Some companies sell products to enhance the capabilities of IDL. ITTVIS sells the Advanced Math & Statistics Library (formerly "IDL Analyst") which adds the capablities of the IMSL^(TM) C Numerical Library to IDL. Jacquette Consulting sells the Slither package which enables one to call Python functions and execute Python statements directly from IDL. The Tech-X corporation sells FastDL which allows IDL visualization and analysis applications to run in parallel.

Astronomy IDL Software Sites

ACS (Advanced Camera for Surveys) analysis software

The ACS was installed on the Hubble Space Telescope in March 2002. The calibration team IDL software includes procedures for spreadsheet and sound file manipulation along with calibration image analysis. Maurizio Paolillo (University of Napoli) has written multiking_ addACS.pro to add a simulated PSF or Globular Clusters to HST ACS flt images.

Adaptive Optics Software

The Center for Adaptive Optics (CfAO) at the Lick Observatory provides links to several AO packages which use IDL including an AO Simulation Package written by Francois Rigaut, StarFinder software written in August 2000 to analyze stellar fields from AO images, and Virtual Telescope Software to simulate telescope observing parameters (e.g. S/N). The CAOS - Code for Adaptive Optics System system at Arcetri Observatory is composed of a graphical programming environment, which can load different packages including the CAOS software package (V5.2, April 2007), the MAOS (Multiconjugate Adaptive Optics Simulations) package, and the AIRY image reconstruction package.

AIT (Astronomical Institute of Tübingen) IDL software

The AIT Library includes IDL procedures for analyzing X-ray astronomy data, and provides a nice up-to-date interface to the IDL Astronomy Library. It also provides access to the TRIPP (Time Resolved Imaging PHotometry Package) software, and to procedures for time-series analysis.

Aladin Interface

Aladin is an interactive software sky atlas allowing the user to visualize digitized astronomical images, superimpose entries from astronomical catalogues or databases. Since February 2007, an IDL interface has been available, using the IDL_Java bridge to allow users to launch Aladin, load images, load tables, select object in tables, etc. from the IDL prompt.

ATV Image Display Tool

ATV is an image display widget written by Aaron Barth (UC Irvine), that is modeled after the SAOimage display package. The current version is 2.1, last modified 21-May-2009 and includes astronomical coordinate tracking, radial profile plots, choice of coordinate systems, and the ability to read FITS extensions. A modified version of ATV called SMTV which includes WCS overlays, DS9 region files, and image cube options is available in the SMART data analysis package

Jeremy Bailin's IDL Utilities (JBIU )

Jeremy Bailin makes available a small library of astronomy and miscellaneous routines. Version 1.3 was released in April 2009.

CHIANTI: A Database for Astrophysical Emission Line Spectroscopy

CHIANTI consists of a suite of IDL programs and a database of atomic data for calculating synthetic spectra in the region between 50 A and 1100 A. This site at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) includes extensive documentation. Version 5.2.1 was released in July 2008. The Package for Interactive Analysis of Line Emission (PINTofALE) at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics (CFA) uses CHIANTI for the analysis of spectroscopic data from optically-thin coronal plasmas. Version 2.60 was last updated June 2007. The Chandra X-ray Center has an IDL interface to Version V2.0.0 (December 2003) of the Atomic Database (ATOMDB) for X-ray spectral modeling. Jan-Uwe Ness ASU) and Rainer Wichmann (Hamburg) have developed CORA a maximum-likelihood line-fitting package for X-ray spectra that can be run in IDL or C. V4.1 was released in May 2009.

Cosmology Routines

ICOSMO is a general purpose interactive Cosmology calculations package that allows one to easily calculate a wide range of cosmological function from distances and dark matter power spectra to observable correlation functions and dark energy Fisher matrix prediction. Version 1.1 of the IDL source code was released in September 2008. John Moustakas (U. of Arizona) has developed RED a set of cosmology routines written in IDL (last updated June 2006). Anthony Smith (Sussex) makes available a set of IDL procedures dealing with galaxies and luminosity functions. Marco Barden (MPIA) has written FERENGI ( Full and Efficient Redshifting Ensemble of Nearby Galaxy Images) which uses the K corrections to model the appearance of a galaxy at any redshift.

DanIDL

Dan Bramich (IAC) has released a library of mainly astronomy-related IDL procedures including routines for image differencing, Delaunay triangle source matching, and synthesis functions. The library is available for a one-time subscription fee. Version 1.1 was released in May 2009.

Education and Instruction Astronomy IDL Pages

Robert O'Connell (U. of Virginia) has written a guide to IDL for Astronomers including exercises for class work. Carl Heiles (UC Berkeley) has written a set of postscript file tutorials on Learning IDL for Astronomy . Christophe Morisset at the Instituto de Astronomia UNAM Mexico has written an IDL cookbook for beginners in IDL. L. Nicastro (INAF-IASF) presented an IDL primer course in May 2008. Rob Rutten at the Sterrekundig Instituut Utrecht in the Netherlands has written a course in Stellar Spectral Line Formation which includes exercises written in IDL.

EZ_Ages

EZ_Ages is an IDL code package that computes the mean, light-weighted stellar population age, [Fe/H], and abundance enhancements [Mg/Fe], [C/Fe], [N/Fe], and [Ca/Fe] for unresolved stellar populations. This is accomplished by comparing Lick index line strengths between the data and the stellar population models of Schiavon (2007), using a method described in Graves &.Schiavon (2008).

Group K IDL User's Library

This is a collection of general purpose and high energy astrophysics routines written by members of the particle astrophysics group at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. A good site for mathematics and statistics routines. Last updated 04/99.

The Hammer An IDL Spectral Typing Suite

The Hammer spectral typing algorithm was originally developed for use on late-type SDSS spectra, but has subsequently been modified to allow it to classify spectra in a variety of formats with targets spanning the MK spectral sequence..Written and maintained by Kevin Covey (Harvard), Andrew A. West, and John J. Bochanski

Joe Harrington's IDL packages

Joe Harrington (U. of Central Florida) make several IDL packages available including DeFringeflat - a wavelet transform to defringe flats, Optspecextr - optimal extraction of a point source spectrum, "Synthspec" for producing mock spectra from a spectrograph, and "MaskInterp" for repairing bad pixels using a non-linear surface fit to neighboring good pixels.

HIIphot V5.0 Software

This IDL software package developed by D. Thilker (NMSU, 2000 AJ, 120, 3070 ) is designed for accurate photometric characterization of H II regions while permitting genuine adaptivity to irregular source morphology. HIIphot utilizes object recognition techniques to make a first guess at the shapes of all sources and then allows for departure from such idealized ``seeds'' through an iterative growing procedure.

IDL-CSPICE Interface (ICY)

Ed Wright (JPL) has developed an IDL DLM interface to the C version of the SPICE ephemeris/geometry library which is used to read/write spacecraft navigation trajectory data files (known as kernels), perform various geometry calculations and time conversions. The IDL directory contains five directories corresponding to different hardware platforms. A completely different interface to the SPICE library called CASPER (Cassini Sequence Planner) was written for the Cassini spacecraft.

IDLAstro Contrib directories

/beck the neural network classifier procedure nnet.pro and training program train_nnet.pro

/bhill The object-oriented display widgets XCTV, XCTV2, XCTVN for roaming, zooming, scaling and examining pixel values in one, two or many images (last updated 27-Apr-2004).

/freudenreich ROBLIB, a set of mathematical and statistical procedures for robust data analysis

/knight LOOK - a (large) widget image display program

/ RXTE - contains "IDL Extractor" programs to extract light curves, spectra and power spectra from RXTE data (and also Swift and Chandra data). Version 1.2 updated Februrary 2009

Integral Field Spectroscopy Software

Adam S. Bolton (IfA) and Scott Burles (MIT ) have written kungifu a set of IDL software routines designed for the calibration and reduction of fiber-fed integral-field unit (IFU) astronomical spectroscopy. C. Iserlohe ( Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik) has written the IDL GUI packages UNYS and CHI2 to deconvolve a line-of-sight-velocity-profile from an object spectrum using a template spectrum. The programs were designed to work on near-infrared spectrographs SPIFFI and ISAAC. The current version V2.1 (beta) was released in August 2003. Mark Westmoquette (UCL) has modified the PAN curve-fitting widget from Rob Dimeo for use with astronomical spectra An IDL package for 3D Fabry-Perot Data Reduction Software was developed at the Université de Montréal and was designed for the FaNTOmM integral field spectrometer.

IMAGE spacecraft analysis software

The IMAGE spacecraft was launched in March 2000 to study the Earth's magnetosphere, and IDL analysis software includes EUV_IMTOOL , a image processing widget for images from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUV), and software for the Far-Ultraviolet Imager (FUV) . IDL interfaces are available to read the Universal Data Format (UDF).

Spitzer and Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) software

The Spitzer Science Center distributes several IDL tools including the large SMART (IRS Spectroscopy Modeling Analysis and Reduction Tool) package (Version 6.4 released November 2008). This package is designed to analyze data from the Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) but includes many useful general astronomy tools. JD Smith (U. of Arizona) developed CUBISM , a tool for constructing spectral cubes, maps, and arbitrary aperture 1D spectral extractions from sets of mapping mode spectra taken with Spitzer's IRS spectrograph (V1.6 released November 2008). He also makes available PAHFIT , an IDL tool for decomposing Spitzer IRS spectra of polyaromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission sources. (Version 1.2 released in October 2006). The Instrument Definition Teams for ISO developed their interactive analysis software in IDL, and the software and documentation can be accessed from the ISO Data Center in VillaFranca, Spain. Access to the ISO software in the U.S. is available from the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) . The ISO Spectral Analysis Package (ISAP) was last updated March 11, 2002 (V3.0). The LWS Interactive Analysis (LIA) package was last updated Nov 1, 2001 (V10). The ISOPHOT Interactive Analysis Package (PIA) was last updated July, 2002 (V10.0).

Interferometry: Optical and Infrared

The Optical Interferometer Script Data Reduction package Oyster was developed at the US Naval Observatory as a comprehensive system for displaying, editing, averaging, calibrating, and modeling interferometry data. V7.0 was released in December 2008. The MIDI Interactive Analysis (MIA) software was developed at the Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie (MPIA) to analyze data from the MID-infrared Interferometric instrument (MIDI) on the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). Version 1.6 was released Sep 2006. John Monnier (U. of Michigan) has developed an IDL interface to (OIFITS) to read OIFITS (Optical Interferometry FITS) data, which is a proposed standard for storing optical interferometry data in FITS binary tables. It was last updated in Jan 2007.

James Mullaney's IDL Software

James Mullaney (Durham) has developed several IDL GUI packages mainly dealing with spectral extraction and analysis.

Jason Procheska's XIDL software

This site at the Lick Observatory includes procedures for modeling and analyzing spectra of damped Ly Alpha absorption lines (DLA), but includes some routines generally useful for spectroscopy and photometry. V2.0 was released in June 2007.

Jesùs Maíz-Apellániz' Astronomy software

This site at the Space Telescope Science Institute includes CHORIZOS, a chi-square code to compare photometry with model spectral energy distributions, MULTISPEC, software for reducing images of slitless spectra, and JMAPLOT, a simplified wrapper to the IDL plotting routines.

LACOSMIC (LAplacian COSMIC ray identification) software

LACOSMIC (Van Dokkum 2001, PASP, 113, 1420) is an algorithm for robust cosmic ray identification using Laplacian edge detection. IDL code is included at Peter van Dokkum's Yale website for the case of imaging.

Marc Buie's Astronomy IDL software (CCDPHOT, ITOOL)

Includes the IDL widget programs CCDPHOT to process CCD data, and ITOOL for general image processing, which were developed at Lowell Observatory for the processing of solar system CCD images. Contains many useful IDL procedures for astronomical analysis. Last updated April 2009.

Markus Feldt's Astronomy Packages

Markus Feldt at MPIA Heidelberg makes available two IDL packages: SimVLTI for simulating observations with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) in Paranal, Chile, and A/O (Version 0.37.2) a package to analyze data taken by array cameras, in particular the ALFA/OMEGA (Adaptive optics with a Laser For Astronomy) system.

Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Analysis Software

The IDL software package for the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) (Version 2.0 updated 16 Aug 2006) includes time/coordinate conversion and pixelization algorithms useful for microwave background analysis. WMAP and most other CMB experiments use the HEALPix (Hierarchical Equal Area isoLatitude Pixelisation) pixelization scheme, and the HEALPix collaboration includes IDL software for fast and accurate statistical and astrophysical analysis of full-sky data sets (Version 2.11c updated February 2009). Chris North (University of Oxford) has written additional IDL routines which interface to HEALPix to visualise and manipulate maps of the sky. Older code includes the analysis software for the COsmic Background Explorer (COBE) which was primarily written in IDL (Version 4.1 released June 1999). The COMBAT (Cosmic Microwave Background Analysis Tools) Collaboration developed FORECAST (FOREgrounds and CMB Anisotropy Simulation Tools), an IDL package to selectively display IRAS/DIRBE data (last modified December 1999). The bolo-software package was written at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) to test the SPIRE (Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver) bolometer planned for the Herschel Space Observatory.

MIMIR Data Reduction Software

MIMIR is a near-infrared instrument build at Boston University and Lowell Observatory. The software includes a GUI-based IDL "project" that performs all the raw data intake, quality testing, bookkeeping, dark/flat/linearity corrections, and wavelength calibration needed to generate "science ready" images. Version 1.2 released March 09

MPE IDL Cloudy Environment (MICE)

An IDL interface written by Hendrik Spoon to the popular photoionization code CLOUDY . Also, Christophe Morisset (UNAM) has written CLOUDY_3D, a pseudo-3D photoionization IDL wrapper to CLOUDY which is available on request.

Multi-Gaussian Expansion (MGE) Fits to Galaxies

An IDL package MGE_FIT_SECTORS written by Michele Cappellari (Leiden Observatory), including examples and instructions, to obtain an efficient MGE parameterization for a galaxy surface brightness. The site also contains the program VORONOI_2D_BINNING to bin two-dimensional data to a constant signal-to-noise ratio per bin (last updated November 2006), and the program PPXF to extract galaxy stellar kinematics from absorption line spectra. Davor Krajnović (Oxford University) makes available the KINEMETRY package (last updated Feb 2006), for analysis of 2D maps of (kinematic) moments of the line-of-sight-velocity distribution (LOSVD).

NICMOS (Near Infrared Camera & Multi-Object Spectrometer) Software Site

at the University of Arizona. Includes widget tools for general image display (NICLOOK, IDP3), to edit headers of groups of FITS files (FHE), to examine multi-extension FITS files (FITSTOOL), Lucy deconvolution (LUCY), and to subtract a PSF. The Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF) NICMOS Page includes the widget image display program NICMOSLOOK for manual extraction of grism images.

Photometric Data Extractor (PODEX)

PODEX is an IDL widget written by Thomas Kallinger (Institut fur Astronomie, Vienna) to obtain light curves from photometric CCD data

PROPER IDL-based simulation of light through an optical system.

PROPER is a library of IDL routines developed by John Kirst (JPL) to simulate the propagation of light through an optical system. It automatically applies near and far field propagators. It includes functions to create complex apertures, model a deformable mirror, and create amplitude and phase aberrations (Zernike, PSD-defined, user-generated map).. A detailed manual is available. Version 1.1 was released in September 2008.

Radio Astronomy Software

IDL procedures have been developed at the National Astronomy and Ionospheric Center's Arecibo Observatory for reducing spectral line and mapping data. PACERMAN (Polarisation Angle CorrEcting Rotation Measure ANalysis) is an IDL code to calculate Faraday rotation measure maps from multi-frequency polarisation angle data (V1.2 released August 2005). GBTIDL is an interactive package for reduction and analysis of spectral line data taken with the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). Version 2.5 was released in February 2009. Tom Bania (Boston U.) has written an IDL data analysis package for single dish radio astronomy, that was designed for the GBT , but should be useable for any single dish radio telescope. Erik Rosolowsky (CFA) and Adam Leroy (UC/Berkeley) have developed the CPROPS package. to characterize molecular cloud properties in a molecular line data cube. Their software uses the CLUMPFIND algorithm developed by Jonathan Williams (Hawaii) to find local peaks in data cubes. MIR is a complete IDL package to reduce data obtained with the Smithsonian Submillimeter Array (SMA) Last updated August 2008.

REDUCE Cross-dispersed Echelle Spectra reduction package

Nikolai Piskunov (Uppsala) makes available the IDL package REDUCE (Piskunov & Valenti 2002, A & A, 385, 1095) and also includes a small general IDL library. Additional IDL programs for modeling stellar spectra are made available by Oleg Kochukhov (Uppsala).

RVLIN Software

Jason Wright (Cornell) and Andrew Howard (Berkeley) make available RVLIN, an IDL package for efficient fitting of multi-planet Kepelrian models to radial velocity and astrometric data.

Rome Astronomical Observatory IDL Library

Gianluca Li Causi maintains this site containing IDL procedures useful in astronomy at the Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma (O.A.R.)

Shapelets IDL Software

Shapelets are a complete, orthonormal set of 2D basis functions constructed from Laguerre or Hermite polynomials weighted by a Gaussian which can be used to model any image, and are especially useful for galaxy modeling. Richard Massey and Alexandre Refregier (CalTech) make their well-documented IDL shapelet code publicly available (Version 2.2 released May 2008). Dave Goldberg (Drexel U.) uses shapelets for his IDL flexion code for analyzing distortions due to gravitational lensing.

SIMPLE Imaging and Mosaicking Pipeline

SIMPLE is an IDL based data reduction package for optical and near-IR blank-field imaging observations developed by W.H. Wang (NRAO). While it is currently optimized for the MOIRCS camera on Subaru and the WIRCAM camera on CFHT, its subroutines are written as generally as possible. Version 1.1 was released in Aug. 2008

Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) IDL Software

Some researchers from SDSS institutions keep their analysis software for SDSS images and spectra publicly available. Erin Scott Sheldon maintains the U. of Michigan/Chicago/NYU IDL SDSS library , which includes IDL wrappers to C/C++ routines for postgres database interface, efficient file input/output, and efficient ra/dec searching using the Hierarchical Triangular Mesh (HTM). The IDL SDSS spectroscopy software at Princeton can be downloaded as tar files, and documentation is available for the IDLSPEC2D and IDLUTILS libraries. Mike Blanton (NYU) has written IDL code to calculate galaxy K-corrections and spectral energy distributions (Version 4 released in September 2005). Vivienne Wild & Paul Hewett (Institute of Astronomy) make IDL code available for removing residual sky features (OH lines) from SDSS spectra. David Hogg (NYU) maintains a page with IDL code for proper color representation of multi-band imaging.

Small Bodies Node (SBN) at the University of Maryland

IDL procedures for reading images and tables in the Planetary Data System (PDS) format. Version 4.3 was released May 2008.

Solar Software Library

Includes a very large number of general and solar-related IDL procedures accessible via FTP . Search pages for these procedures are available at the Yohkoh Web Page at Lockheed . Dominic Zarro has written IDL code using IDL Map Software for Analyzing Solar Images , and an introduction to Programming with IDL Objects: Why and how to do it". and a guide to using IDL Sockets to manipulate files over a Web server. Many additional routines are available from the UCSD (University of California) Solar & Heliospheric Physics group.

Solar Stellar Spectrograph (SSS) Software

The SSS is a project dedicated to long-term observations of the Sun and Sun-like stars. The well-documented object-oriented software reduction code carries out the steps ( e.g. flat-fielding, scattered light removal, spectrum extraction) and includes classes available for general use.

SpexTool: Infrared Cross-dispersed Spectrograph Software

This page contains SpexTool (V3.4 October 2006), an IDL-based spectral extraction package written by Vacca, Cushing & Rayner (Institute for Astronomy, Hawaii) for the Spex instrument, a 0.8 - 5.5 micron cross-dispersed spectrograph on the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. Also on this page is a package for removing telluric lines from near-infrared spectra. It was designed for the SpeX instrument but can be used on other near-infrared spectrographs.

Stellar Locus Regresion

FW High (Harvard/CFA) and co-workers make available an IDL package to directly adjust instrumental broadband optical colors of stars to bring them into accord with a universal stellar color-color locus. Version 1.1 was released in April 2009.

STOOLS ( IDL Tools for Spectroscopic Analysis)

Carlos Allende Prieto (U. of Texas) makes available some of his IDL software, including a reader for IRAF formatted echelle spectra, and cross-correlating spectra to determine radial velocities.

TARA ( Tools for ACIS Real-time Analysis)

TARA is an IDL widget which was originally developed at Penn State University for for the pre-launch calibration of the AXAF CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS), now aboard the Chandra X-ray observatory, but which is generally useful for studying event data. Additional software is available to correct for the charge-transfer inefficiency (CTI) in the in-flight ACIS detectors. Also, the HETG Analysis Kit (HAK) software is available for analyzing data from the High-Energy Transmission Grating (HETG) aboard Chandra.

Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT) software

The UIT image display software was a precursor to the IDL Astronomy Library, but has some additional routines for image display and astrometry. Last updated in 1995 so it is pretty obsolete.

Ultraviolet Spectral Analysis Software

Some of the ultraviolet spectral analysis software (e.g. multiple Gaussian fits) might be useful for analysis on other types of spectral data. The IUE (International Ultraviolet Explorer) Data Analysis Center is probably the oldest IDL-based astronomical data analysis package (last updated June 1999). The FUSE (Far Ultraviolet Spectrographic Explorer) IDL software includes some excellent general useful tools for the analysis of 1-d spectra (last updated February 2007). Stephen McCandliss (Johns Hopkins U.) has written H2TOOLS for the analysis of molecular hydrogen spectra. The Galex Explorer (GALEX) mission includes grisms to obtain ultraviolet spectra, and Todd Small (Cal Tech) has developed GALEXSpec, an IDL widget for assessing the spectra in a GALEX field.

ULySS (University of Lyon Spectroscopic analysis Software)

ULySS is a well-documented package developed at the Observatoire de Lyon to fit a spectrum with a linear combination of non-linear components convolved with a line-of-sight velocity distribution (LOSVD) and multiplied by a polynomial continuum. It is used to study stellar populations of galaxies and star clusters and atmospheric parameters of stars. Version 0.9 was released in March 2009.

Universal Transit Modeler (UTM) software

Hans-Jörg Deeg (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias) has developed the UTM software, which is light-curve simulator for transiting or eclipsing configurations. He also makes available the vaphot software, a differential photometry package for IRAF and IDL.

Virtual Observatory Tools

The Virtual Observatory is an international effort to develop tools and standards for accessing the wealth of archival astronomical data. Chis Miller (NOAO) has developed Virtual Observatory Libraries for IDL which include a VOTable Reader, access to Cone Servers, Simple Image Access Protocol servers, the NVO Registry, and calls to the Open Sky Query data access service. Jens Suther (Cologne) provides examples of accessing the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory (GAVO) web services from IDL.

Fred Walter's IDL Software

This site at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stonybrook includes the ICUR package developed by Fred Walter & Jim Neff for the analysis of 1-d astronomical spectra, and a package for the photometric reduction of Kitt Peak near-infrared images.

U. of Washington Astronomy IDL Page

Includes IDL software by Eric Deutsch for general (non-widget) image display, deconvolution, and pretty postscript output. Also includes a nice search page for many public IDL libraries.

Weighted Voronoi Tesselations (WVT)

Steven Diehl and Tom Statler (Ohio U.) have written IDL software to compute weighted Voronoi Tesselations, useful for binning sparse X-ray data. V2.0 was released in December 2005.

ZODIPIC Software

The ZODIPIC package is an IDL program written by Marc Kuchner (NASA/Goddard) for synthesizing images of exozodiacal clouds. It also has enough tweakable parameters to serve as a general-purpose modeling tool for optically-thin disks. Zodipic Version 2.1. Includes dust with real optical constants, and user-specified dust maps,

IDL Astronomy Library Home Page

General Astronomy Sites

FITS Support Office

The main source for information about the Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) data format, which is widely used in astronomy.

Systems of Time

This site at the US Naval Observatory explains the time systems (e.g. Julian date, UTC) used in astronomy.