IDL Resources

Interactive Data Language is a complete (and a well known package in astrophysics, medicine and earth science) for the interactive reduction, analysis, and visualization of scientific data and images. Optimized for the PC, Macintosh, and workstation environments, IDL integrates a responsive array oriented language with numerous data analysis methods and an extensive variety of two and three dimensional displays into a powerful tool for researchers.

Some hot IDL links

	IDL product homepage RSI is the manufacturer of IDL (and a Kodak division). The site also contains a section of IDL Tech Tips.
	Coyote guide by Fanning Consulting. Contain the IDL Programming Tips and Tricks and IDL Bug reports.
	IDL description by STScI
	IDL NASA astronomy library
	IDL at Los Alamos
	IDL library browser
	Note su minicorso IDL by L. Nicastro(in Italian)
	GSFC IDL links
	IDL FAQ
	Interactive Visuals, Inc.
	IDL news
	Archive of comp.lang.idl-pvwave Newsgroup
	NG Consulting
	Markwardt IDL Programs (includes MPFit, a Robust non-linear least squares curve fitting program).
	IDLSpecII benchmark page
	Stein Vidar Hagfors Haugan
	IDL at Los Alamos National Lab
	The JHU/APL/S1R IDL Information Page
	The IDL Astronomy User's Library
	David Windt (Multilayer optical properties, Surface topography analysis and General purpose routines)
	Liam E. Gumley (Frame Tools, Satellite Image Mapping Tool, Binary Image Reader, Underground Guide to IDL)
	Marc Buie (general purpose routines)
	LAMP (Large Array Manipulation Program)
	Ronn Hling consulting
	Martin's IDL page
	The GNU Emacs modes for IDL files
	STXM spectral image stacks
	ATV: An interactive image-display tool
	IMDISP: An image display program for IDL
	2D image viewer and other stuff from the FUSE project.
	Surface tips by Struan Gray
	A list to IDL tutorials
	Using IDL to Manipulate and Visualize Scientific Data
	Tomo reconstruction with IDL
	IDL library at ForschungsZentrum Jülich
	ESFR Grenoble Science Software Resources Some IDL local resources (XOP, XPLOT, IDL-Nice project and useful links).
	ICG (Institute for Chemistry and Dynamic of the Geosphere) Library
	Online IDL Documentation in HTML format The V5.1, IDL internal documentation.
	IDL FAQ site (last updated June 2000). The most frequently asked questions posted to newsgroup comp.lang.idl-pvwave for IDL and PV-WAVE. Old messages from comp.lang.idl-pvwave are archived at google.com.
	IDL Plotting Widgets: Fanning's MPI_PLOT package is a object-oriented interactive wrapper for many PLOT keywords. The FUSE group in Paris has written Xiplot which can read a FITS binary table and allows some spectral manipulation. Paul van Delst has written WPLOT and WOPLOT which display resizable and zoomable graphics. The function_1d.pro program in the TARA package includes fitting and shifting procedures. The XPLOT widget from ESRF allows for data analysis of X-Y plots, and is available upon request. Older plotting widgets include the well-documented GRAFFER by James Tappin (U. of Birmingham) which was last updated (Version 2.02) June 1999.
	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 19 Feb 2001.
	Liam Gumley's IDL Library IDL library at the Wisconsin Univ. 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 IDL Library This IDL library in New Zealand contains several plotting & animation Object Graphics classes, a couple of netCDF file classes. Requires IDL 5.5. Last updated 27 Mar 2002.
	Ron 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" and "Calling C from IDL"
	Robert Mallozzi's IDL Library This IDL library at Marshall Space Flight Center includes procedures for widget, objects, and pointers.
	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 2 May 2002.
	Mati Meron's IDL Library This IDL Library FTP site at the University of Chicago is good place to look for special mathematical functions. Last updated September 1999.
	Martin Schultz's IDL Library. IDL library at the Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie was developed for atmospheric science applications, but includes many well-documented IDL utilities. Also include links and search pages for 11 other public IDL libraries. Last updated; August 2001.
	Mathew Craig's TeXtoIDL Software This software translates the TeX character set into the (often obscure) IDL plotting symbol codes. Updated for V5.3 in November 2001.
	David Windt's IDL Library This IDL library at Columbia University Astrophysics Laboratory includes useful 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 Cornell University. Version 4.12 was released in January 2002.
	Using IDL on the Web A collection of perl scripts and HTML forms to demonstrate the use of IDL as a graphics engine to generate on-the-fly GIF images on the World Wide Web. Last updated July 30, 1997.
	IDL Wavelet Software: C. Torrence & G. Campo's Practical Guide to Wavelet Analysis with applications in geophysics, and include some IDL software. A. Graps's Wavelet workbench in IDL, which is adapted from the MATLAB Wavelab software, and which is available in the RSI Directory of User-Contributed software . Also, Multi Resolutions Ltd. sells a software package for Multiresolution Analysis which includes about 5000 lines of IDL code. Note that since IDL V5.3 has had an optional Wavelet Toolkit.

Search engines on IDL routines at:

	Los Alamos National Lab
	University of Washington
	IDL Astronomy Library Search Page

Pages with lists of IDL related links at:

	RSI site
	David Fanning
	NASA (Astronomy and IDL related sites)

IDL ftp links:

	RSI user libraries
	JHU/APL IDL Library
	NASA IDL Astronomy User's Library
	IUE RDAF Library
	ICUR Spectral Analysis Software
	IDL ROSAT Software
	ESRG (Earth Space Research Group)
	The CDS Software Library
	7 programs for rectifying a stereo image pair to normal case.
	How to load MATLAB .mat files in IDL

Astrophysics specific 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.
	AOred Adaptive Optics reduction package AOred is an IDL package written by Jason Marshall and Mitchell Troy at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) for the reduction of images obtained with PALAO - the Adaptive Optics System for the Palomar 200" Telescope. Last updated January 2000.
	ASCA (Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics) reduction software An informal set of IDL routines for reduction of ASCA and AXAF data written by Andy Ptak at Carnegie Mellon & Tahir Yaqoob at Goddard Space Flight Center. Last updated February 1998.
	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.
	ATV Image Display Tool ATV is an image display widget written by Aaron Barth (CalTech), that is modeled after the SAOimage display package. The current version is 1.3, last modified 28-Nov-2000 and includes astronomical coordinate tracking, radial profile plots, choice of coordinate systems, and the ability to read FITS extensions.
	Big Bear Observatory FITS & JPEG Display Software Contains the IDL widget program BBSOFITS to display and process FITS and JPEG images. Last updated November 1997.
	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 3.03 was released December 2001. 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. Last updated 07 December 2001.

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 . The University of Oklahoma Astronomy IDL Page provides IDL code for astronomy instruction at several different levels and for supernovae research.

	Three of the four instruments on GRO include IDL in their data reduction packages. The WINGSPAN (WINdows Gamma SPectral Analysis) software was written primarily in IDL to analyze data from the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE). The IGORE (Interactive GRO/OSSE Reduction Environment) FTP site contains IDL data analysis software for the OSSE (Oriented Scintillation Spectrometer Experiment). The SKYMAP package contains IDL software for analyzing Energetic Gamma-Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET) maps.
	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
	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.

	/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 11-Dec-2001).
	/freudenreich ROBLIB, a set of mathematical and statistical procedures for robust data analysis
	/knight LOOK - a (large) widget image display program
	/landsman Programs for converting between IDL V4 parenthesis and V5 brackets.
	/malumuth TCTOOL - a widget for optimizing a true-color image
	/maskinterp a package from Joe Harrington (Cornell) giving a variety of 2-d bad pixel interpolation methods
	Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) software 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 Jan 9, 2001 (V9.1).
	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 CalTech 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

	The analysis software for the COsmic Background Explorer (COBE) was primarily written in IDL and includes extensive documentation. Version 4.1 of this software was released in June 1999. More recently, the COMBAT (Cosmic Microwave Background Analysis Tools) Collaboration has developed FORECAST (FOREgrounds and CMB Anisotropy Simulation Tools), an IDL package to selectively display IRAS/DIRBE data. The HEALPIX (Hierarchical Equal Area isoLatitude Pixelisation) collaboration includes IDL software for fast and accurate statistical and astrophysical analysis of full-sky data sets (Version 1.10 updated March 2000).
	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.
	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. Additional software is available at the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF) NICMOS Page including the widget image display program NICMOSLOOK for manual extraction of grism images, and the program CalnicC for automated extractions.
	PIXON software distribution site The pixon image reconstruction technique has been widely used in astronomy, and IDL source code implementing an early version of this algorithm is available upon request.
	Small Bodies Node (SBN) at the University of Maryland IDL procedures for reading images and tables in the Planetary Data System (PDS) format. Last updated 19-Jul-2001.

	Some researchers from SDSS institutions keep their analysis software for SDSS images and spectra publicly available. Eric Scott Sheldon maintains the U. of Michigan IDL SDSS library . The IDL SDSS software at Princeton can be downloaded as tar files, and documentation is available for the IDLSPEC2D and IDLUTILS libraries.
	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 and the SOHO search page . Also, Dominic Zarro has written IDL code using object oriented methods for analyzing solar images, and a guide to using IDL Sockets to manipulate files over a Web server.
	STARFINDER software STARFINDER is a well-documented widget package at the Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna for obtaining high-precision astrometry and photometry of crowded stellar fields. Requires IDL V5.0 or later.
	Stuart's Astronomy IDL Collection Stuart Colley at University College London (UCL) makes available some of his IDL software dealing with astronomical spectra, including procedures for merging echelle orders, Fourier CLEANing, and temporal variance spectrum (TVS) analysis. Last updated: 16 May 2001.
	Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT) software
	The UIT image display software for the 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.

	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 (but still active) IDL-based data analysis package (last updated June 1999). The GHRS (Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph IDL software package (last updated December 1996) is available for VMS, Unix or PC systems. Most of the IDL software from the STIS (Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph) IDT (Instrument Definition Team) is not made available to the public (!?), but one program that is available is the the widget program HST_PLANNER, for planning observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The FUSE (Far Ultraviolet Spectrographic Explorer) IDL software includes some excellent general useful tools for the analysis of 1-d spectra (last updated 5-Apr-2001). The FUSE IDL software documentation was last updated 14-Feb-2001.
	TARA (Tools for ACIS Real-time Analysis) TARA is an IDL widget which was developed at Penn State University for for the pre-launch calibration of the AXAF CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS), now aboard the Chandra (formerly AXAF) X-ray observatory. 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.
	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.
	IDL Astronomy Library Home Page

General

	Astronomical Software Directory Service Allows users to search on a variety of astronomical software packages (including but not limited to IDL)
	FITS Archive at NRAO 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.

Last modified May 10 2002
by Stefano Ciprini (INFN/Univ. Perugia),  with the help of Wayne Landsman (SSAI-GSFC)