Links to other Astronomy and IDL related sites

General IDL Resources

General Information about IDL from Exelis Visual Information Solutions

Exelis Visual Information Solutions (formerly ITTVIS, formerly RSI) 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 IDL Help Articles , Web seminars on using IDL, and a User contributed library of routines. The current IDL version is 8.2.2, and the IDL documentation is available online. Mark Piper of Exelis VIS writes a blog on programming, visualization and data analysis with IDL at The IDL Datapoint .

IDL Forums

The main forum for discussion and questions about the IDL language is the Usenet newsgroup comp.lang.idl-pvwave . Exelis 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 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. The IDL Astronomy Library includes a subset of the "Coyote" IDL library, and anyone using IDL direct graphics is encouraged to download this library. The RSS feed provides useful details about updates to the Library. David is also the author of the books IDL Programming Techniques" (2000) and Coyote's Guide to Traditional IDL Graphics (2011).

IDL Plotting Tools:

Several groups have written IDL widgets to allow interactive manipulation of a plot. David Fanning's CGZPLOT allows one to zoom and pan across a plot. 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), was last updated (Version 4.05a) in August 2012. The Coyote Graphics Plot Gallery allows one to click on numerous example plots to see the IDL code used to create it. Leonardo Ubeda (STScI) has developed AstroPlotLib which is a similar, but more astronomy-oriented, clickable plot gallery.

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 2005 book An Introduction to Programming with IDL for beginning programmers.

Database access

Exelis sells DATAMINER , an add-on module that allows one to connect to multiple databases from IDL. Marc Buie developed an MySQL interface using bidirectional pipes. Sergey Koposov has developed idl-sql,, which alllows one to execute SQL queries from IDL and retrieve the results of these queries in IDL. It uses the IDL-Java bridge and the Java Database Connectivity (JDBC). He has also adapted software from Erin Sheldon for accessing a Postgresql database, that does not use the IDL-Java bridge. Shannon Jordan of Exelis contributed a package for connecting IDL to a MySQL database using the IDL-JAVA bridge.

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. Mike also maintains IDLDOC , a utility for producing documentation for any valid IDL code, rIDL , an IDL command line replacement similar to ipython, and mgunit a framework for unit testing for IDL. Mike is the author of Modern IDL: A Guide to 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 April 2009.

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 (1999), Calling C and C++ from IDL (2001), Power Graphics with IDL(2002), Navigating the IDL Workbench(2007), and most recently Object-Oriented Programming with IDL (2010)

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 April 2013.

Mathew Craig's TeXtoIDL Software

This software translates the TeX character set into the (often obscure) IDL plotting symbol codes. Version 2.1.2 updated June 2004. This code has been mostly supplanted by CGSYMBOL in the Coyote Graphics Library

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 6.5 was released in January 2011 and is included in the current Emacs release .

IDL Wavelet Software:

Since V8.0, IDL includes a wavelet toolkit (which was formerly available as a separate addon). 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.

Commercial Add-ons

Some companies sell products to enhance the capabilities of IDL. Exelis 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 GPULib , which provides IDL bindings to the CUDA platform for high performance computing.

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 (v1.6f) first 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. Tuan Do (UCLA) has written Fourier Optics GUI (fgui), an IDL widget that computes and displays the effect of adding phase aberrations for apertures of different shapes

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 3.0b2, last modified 21-Nov-2011 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. Ken Mighell (NOAO) and his students have written PHAST based on ATV, but which includes additional photometry/astrometry tools. Version 1.3 was released in December 2012.

Chris Beaumont's IDL Code

Chris Beaumont (U. of Hawaii) makes available some of his IDL routines, iincluding procedures for Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulations, kinematic distances, robust methods, and vector and stack classes. Last updated Mar 2011.

Atomic Database Programs

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 7.1.1 was released in April 2013. 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 2.951 was last updated July 2012. 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. P.G. Judge (HAO) has developed HAOS-DIPER to manipulate data for neutral atoms and atomic ions in space plasmas, notably solar and stellar atmospheres. Version 1.1 was release in Jan. 2013.

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 1.2 of the IDL source code was released in July 2010. John Moustakas (UC San Diego) and Leonidas Moustakas (JPL) have 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 (ESO) has released a library of mainly astronomy-related IDL procedures including routines for image differencing, Delaunay triangle source matching, and synthesis functions. The entire library is available for a one-time subscription fee, but a subset of the DanIDL routines is available in the public domain via the DanIDL-Lite library. Version 2.0 of DanIDL-Lite was released in June 2012.

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 (last updated June 2012). Robert da Silva (Lick Observatory) has written A Slug's Guide to IDL. It is an actively updated IDL resource with simplified explanations and examples. 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(2004) for beginners in IDL. L. Nicastro (INAF-IASF) presented an IDL primer course in June 2009.

Exoplanet Software

Jason Wright (Cornell) and Andrew Howard (Berkeley) make available RVLIN, an IDL package for efficient fitting of multi-planet Keplerian models to radial velocity and astrometric data. Version 2.9 was released in May 2012. The site also includes a robust parameter uncertainty estimator for RVLIN (V1.1 released October 2012). Jason Eastman (Ohio State) and colleagues make available EXOFAST a robust suite of IDL routines designed to fit exoplanetary transits and radial velocity variations and characterize the parameter uncertainties and covariances with a Differential Evolution Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. J. Zachary Gazak (U. of Hawaii) and colleagues distribute the Transit Analysis Package (TAP) an IDL Widget which utilizes Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques to fit transit light curves. Brian Jackson (Carnegie Inst.) and colleagues have developed developed EVIL-MC (Ellipsoidal Variations Induced by a Low-Mass Companion) (to calculate stellar ellipsoidal variations and planetary phase function.

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).

Fermi Analysis Software

The Fermi Science team makes available rmfit, which will create lightcurves, fit backgrounds, and fit single or multiple spectra for NaI and BGO detectors. It was written by R. Preece, M. Briggs, and V. Connaughton (U. of Alabama, Huntsville).

IGALFIT: An IDL Interactive Tool for GALFIT

R Ryan (Space Telescope Science Institue) developed the IGALFIT package, for the primary purpose of modeling galaxy images with GALFIT. However, the package has several ancillary uses, including a flexible image display routines, several basic photometry functions, and qualitatively assessing SourceExtractor output. V1.1 was released in October 2011.

GALAPAGOS: Galaxy Analysis over Large Areas: Parameter Assessment by GALFITting Objects from Sextractor

Marco Barden (University of Innsbruck) developed the GALAPAGOS package, which combines object detection with SExtractor and light profile modelling with GALFIT to help automate the analysis of large astronomical imaging survey data sets.

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. V1.2 was written in Dec 09.

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.

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

Christer Sandin (Potsdam) and collaborators have written P3d , a general data-reduction IDL widget for analyzing data from fiber-fed integral field spectrographs (IFSs). V2.2.1 released January 2013. 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. F. F. Rosales-Ortega (Cambridge, IEM-CSIC) has written PINGSoft2, set of IDL routines (last updated November 2012) designed to visualise and interactively manipulate integral field spectroscopic data. The software was originally designed to handle Califa data. 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. Rogemar A. Riffel (Universidade Federal de Santa Maria) has written PROFIT (Emission-line PROfile FITting routine) to do automated fitting of emission-line profiles by Gaussian curves or Gauss-Hermite series optimized for use in Integral Field and Fabry-Perot data cubes. V1.2 released Sep. 2011.

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 Astronomy software

The Spitzer Science Center distributes several IDL tools including the large SMART (IRS Spectroscopy Modeling Analysis and Reduction Tool) package (Version 8.2.7 released January 2013). 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 (V1.8 released July 2011). 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). Matthieu Bethermin and collegues at the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale (IAS) make available IDL software for analysis of infrared galaxies, including stacking of Spitzer images (V1.0 release Dec 2009), PSF fitting with position priors (V1.0 release May 2010), and a model of the infrared sky. Sarah Kendrew (Leiden Observatory) has written IDL code to compute the sensitivity of a ground-based mid-infrared instrument, originally written for the proposed Mid-Infrared E-ELT Imager and Spectrograph (METIS) . Dan Li (U. of Florida) has written IDEALCam ( Interactive Data Reduction and Analysis for CanariCam ), an efficient tool to access, reduce, and analyze multi-extension mid-IR FITS files . The Instrument Definition Teams for the Infrared Space Observatory (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 Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) provides IDL tools for querying their catalogs and reading and writing the IPAC table format.

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. V7.17 was released in November 2011. 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 1.7.1 was released Nov 2009. 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 2013.

James Mullaney's IDL Software

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

Jason Prochaska'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. V3.0 was released in June 2010.

Jesùs Maíz-Apellániz' Astronomy software

This site in Granada, Spain 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. Continuously updated.

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.

MASE: MAGE Spectral Extractor

The MAgE IDL software was written by John Bochanski (MIT) and collaborators to reduce data from the Magellan Echellete Spectrograph (MAGE) . Reduction steps include flatfielding, spectral extraction, wavelength and flux calibrations. V1.0 was released in Sep 09.

Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Analysis Software

The IDL software package for the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) (Version 4.1 updated Mar 2010) 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 2.20 updated Feb 2011). 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 built 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 3.2.4 released April 2012.

MRLENS (Multi-Resolution methods for gravitational LENSing). Software

The MRLENS package offers a new algorithm for the reconstruction of Weak Lensing mass maps using the Multiscale Entropy concept (which is based on wavelets) and the False Discovery Rate (FDR) which allows us to derive robust detection levels in wavelet space. Version 1.0 was released in March 2008.

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. Last updated Aug 2011. 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

NICMOSlook is an IDL program to extract spectra from pairs of grism / direct images of the same region. It was developed at the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility and supports NICMOS both before and after installation of the cryocooler.

Photoionization Modeling

Bent Groves (Sterrewacht Leiden ) has written ITERA (IDL Tool for Emission-line Ratio Analysis) widget tool which allows one to plot ratios of any strong atomic and ionized emission lines as determined by standard photoionization and shock models. Last updated October 2009. Hendrik Spoon has written MPE IDL Cloudy Environment (MICE) an IDL interface 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.

Planetary Data System (PDS) format readers

The Small Bodies Node (SBN) at the University of Maryland provides IDL procedures for reading images and tables in the PDS format. Version 4.5 was released Nov. 2011. The Observatory of Paris provides an alternate IDL procedure for reading PDS files as part of the EuroPlaNet project, that is especially well-suited for spectral cubes. Version 3.0 was released in November 2012.

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 Krist (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 2.8 was released in June 2011. 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 May 2012.

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).

SGP-IDL Package for the single and multiple deconvolution of 2D images corrupted by Poisson noise

SGP-IDL was developed by M. Prato (Modena) and colleagues. It computes a deconvolved image by early stopping of the scaled gradient projection (SGP) algorithm for the solution of the optimization problem coming from the minimization of the generalized Kullback-Leibler divergence between the computed image and the observed image. The algorithms have been i mplemented also for Graphic Processing Units (GPUs).

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 SDSSIDL 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). V1.7 was released in January 2012. 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 4.2 released in February 2010). Vivienne Wild & Paul Hewett (Institute of Astronomy) make IDL code available for removing residual sky features (OH lines) from SDSS spectra. Her page also includes IDL code for iterative robust and iterative principal component analysis (PCA). David Hogg (NYU) maintains a page with IDL code for proper color representation of multi-band imaging.

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". 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.

SpecPro An IDL Program for Viewing and Analyzing Astronomical Spectra

SpecPro is an interactive program written by D. Masters and P. Capak for viewing and analyzing spectra, particulary in the context of modern imaging surveys. In addition to displaying the 1D and 2D spectrum, SpecPro can simultaneously display available stamp images as well as the spectral energy distribution of a source. Version 3.0 was released in February 2012.

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.

SPIRE Photometer Simulator (SPS)

The SPS software was developed in IDL to simulate the operation of the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver on-board the ESA Herschel Space Observatory. Version 2.31b was released in October 2009.

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.

TA-DA ( A Tool for Astrophysical Data Analysis)

TA-DA is an IDL save file for the comparison of stellar photometric with theoretical models, and for the derivation of stellar parameters from multi-band photometry. Version 0.99 was release in October 2012.

TAME ( Tools for Automatic Measurement of Equivalent Width )

TAME is an IDL save file for the measurement of Equivalent Widths (EWs) in a high-resolution spectrum. It was written by Wonseok Kang and Sang-Gak Lee (Seoul National University). Version 1.1 was last modified in January 2013.

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. The HETG Analysis Kit (HAK) software is available for analyzing data from the High-Energy Transmission Grating (HETG) aboard Chandra. Joel Kastner and his students at the Rochester Institute of Technolgy make available IDL software for Subpixel Event Repositioning for the ACIS detectors.

Time Utilities

Jason Eastman (OSU) and colleagues make available well-documented IDL code for precision conversion to and from barycentric Julian date.

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. Charles Danforth (U. of Colorado) makes available IDL tools for analyzing data from the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS).

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 1.1 was released in Jan 2011.

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.

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 (but old) 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. Christopher Stark (Carnegie Institute) distributes DUSTMAP, an IDL package to view debris disks from any vantage point -- even from within! Version 3.0 was released in February 2011.

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.