An article by Feigelson and Murtagh (1992) discusses publicly available astronomical software and numerical libraries and offers additional hints about using the network. An example of one of these services is the node netlib@research.att.com, which will send any one of a number of numerical algorithms upon receipt of an e-mail message of the form send name_of_routine. Send a message saying send index to see what is available. A similar service for statistical software is available from statlib@temper.stat.cmu.edu (128.2.241.142).
An Astronomical Software Directory Service has been initiated by the second of the present authors (Hanisch, Payne, and Hayes 1994). The objective of this project is to provide astronomers with the ability to search for certain types of algorithms, applications programs, or utilities, across the many software packages in use in the community. Users will be able to read documentation, learn about software and hardware requirements for the code, and get pointers to anonymous FTP archives where code may be retrieved.
Many of the data analysis packages used in the astronomy community are available in FTP archives. A table of such systems is given below. Note that some groups require that you make previous arrangements with them in order to retrieve their software, although patches are usually freely available.
System Org Archive Address e-mail contact
------ --- --------------- --------------
IRAF NOAO iraf.noao.edu iraf@noao.edu
(140.252.1.1)
STSDAS STScI stsci.edu stsdas@stsci.edu
(130.167.1.2)
PROS CfA sao-ftp.harvard.edu pros@cfa.harvard.edu
(128.103.42.3)
AIPS NRAO baboon.cv.nrao.edu aipsmail@nrao.edu
(192.33.115.103)
MIDAS ESO ftphost.hq.eso.org midas@eso.org
(134.171.8.4)
VISTA Lowell lowell.edu vista@lowell.edu
(192.103.11.2)
FIGARO AAO aaoepp.aao.gov.au ks@aaoepp.aao.gov.au
(130.155.203.64)
PGPLOT Caltech deimos.caltech.edu tjp@deimos.caltech.edu
(131.215.139.14)
IDL Astr Lib GSFC idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov landsman@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov
(128.183.57.82)
Table 1: Some Major Astronomical Data Analysis Packages available via FTP
Information about the FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) data format standard is also available on-line. The NSSDC provides the NASA description of the FITS standard on nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov (128.183.36.23). More FITS-related documents, sample data, test files, and a log of the transactions in the Usenet newsgroup sci.astro.fits are available on fits.cv.nrao.edu (192.33.115.8). Most of the files can also be found on ftphost.hq.eso.org (134.171.8.4). A library of I/O routines for reading and writing FITS files has been developed by Bill Pence at HEASARC; look in the directory pub/fitsio3 on tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov (128.183.8.77), or send e-mail to pence@tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov.
At Penn State University the Statistical Consulting Center for Astronomy has recently been created (see the directory ftp.stat.psu.edu:pub/scca or the URL http://www.stat.psu.edu/scca/homepage.html).
Pointers to other software packages of interest to astronomers are listed within the MediaTheque project of CDS; see URL http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/CDS.html (Heck 1994a).