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Begginers Documents.

Nigel Douglas wrote on Mar 03, 2010

I think that it is time for a new IRAF primer. Jeanette Barnes has made some good documents for various specific groups and the 1993 Beginner's Guide is fine.
But I have noticed within my institute that we need a real IRAF-for Dummys
for those who have been a long "holiday" from IRAF.

To get back the memory in the fingers something like Jeanette's set of exercises is welcome, but unfortunately this is marred by some errors and inconsistencies,
as well as the use of imh files instead of fits, and other antiquated facets such as the downlods by ftp.

I can give you more details if you need them.

Much thanks, Nigel.

Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Mar 03, 2010

Nigel,

I agree completely that new documentation is needed, both for beginners as well as updated reduction cookbooks. As you can imagine, though, the resources needed to write that material are hard to come by.

Google can be your friend here, simple searches of "IRAF tutorial" or "IRAF introduction" turn up lots of locally written guides, either specific to a small observatory or something useful to undergrads/beginners. For example, see

http://www.twilightlandscapes.com/IRAFtutorial/

or

http://www.aavso.org/observing/programs/ccd/zen_of_iraf.pdf

If you're willing to collect such links on your Google journey I'll be happy to post them prominently on the Docs page (which also needs updating), perhaps this will serve until a willing author for new docs can be found.

Cheers,
-Mike

Last post on Mar 03, 2010