Introduction to IDL for Scientific Research

Tentative Outline:

• Day 1: Introduction, Getting Started, Where to Look for Help, Variables
• Day 2: Loops, Functions & Procedures, Good Programming Practice
• Day 3: Data I/O, Strings, Structures
• Day 4: Traditional Plotting, Graphics Keywords
• Day 5: Color, Plotting in IDL 8.0
• Day 6: Data Analysis, Fits Data, FFT
• Day 7: Fitting Data, Astro Library
• Day 8: Calibrating Data

Day 1

• IDL homepage (Exelis)
• IDL astro library
• David Fanning (lots of tips and tricks)
• Craig Markwardt (lots of useful stuff, in particular MPFIT)
• Marc Buie
• IDL Newsgroup
• GNU Data Langugage
• idlwave

Day 3

• basic overview of string manipulation routines

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

• NRAO Fits archive
• HEASARC Fits page
• atv (image display program)
• ds9 (stand-alone fits image display program)
• interface between IDL and ds9

Day 7

• the JPL ephemeris file JPLEPH.405

Day 8

Day 9