| Re: How does IDL do ... [message #8933 is a reply to message #8882] |
Thu, 08 May 1997 00:00  |
D.Kennedy
Messages: 26
Registered: January 1997
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Junior Member |
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In article <ewilliams-0105970753190001@ppp6.subnet252.wesleyan.edu>,
ewilliams@wesleyan.edu (Eric Williams) writes:
> Hi all,
>
> I am trying to put together a presentation for new IDL users that is a
> good introduction to using it for astronomical applications. One of the
> similar applications used in astro is IRAF. If anyone is familiar with IDL
> and IRAF would you be able to give me a rundown comparing the two,
> particularly when you might want to use one over the other. We have both
> apps in our working environment and I don't want to displace either, but I
> have never really used IRAF and I have a feeling that some things our
> users do in IRAF can be done faster in IDL. I already know that programing
> in IDL is much clearer.
Hmm I dunno , I'm a third year PhD student in Astronomy who uses
both IRAF and IDL. I get the feeling that for data reduction
using IDL would be re-inventing the wheel. Certainly when
faced with reducing an echelle spectroscopic observing tape
I'd reach for IRAF. Analysis may be a different thing depending
on what sort of work you do however I certainly use
IDL a lot for presenting results and working with results obtained
from the spectra.
I see IRAF and IDL as totally different types of package but again I
don't use IRAF for anything other than data reduction, at which it
is very good.
Different tools for different jobs. If IRAF has a _good_ task for it
then why use IDL? In my case I started using IDL as I could not
find software to do the (rather simple!) jobs I wanted with my
radio data.
Oh, and you left out a job area - programming!
--
David Kennedy, Dept. of Pure & Applied Physics, Queen's University of Belfast
Email: D.Kennedy@Queens-Belfast.ac.uk | URL: http://star.pst.qub.ac.uk/~dcjk/
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