NOIRLab IRAF v2.18.1

New for 2025: NOIRLab IRAF v2.18.1 Patch Available

The IRAF v2.18.1 release is a product of the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC), the US National Gemini Office (US NGO) and the Gemini Observatory at NSF NOIRLab. This release is primarily a bugfix and feature update to the earlier IRAF v2.18 in order to support GEMINI data reduction and recent platform updates.

Quick Start Installation

Download the self-installer script and execute in an empty directory, or specify the name of the new IRAF directory as an argument.
Type 'cl' to start IRAF in the current directory.

See below for download and installation instructions.

Introduction

The Image Reduction and Analysis Facility (IRAF) is a general-purpose software system for the reduction and analysis of scientific data. Its development started in 1984 at the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (NOAO) in Tucson, Arizona. As of January 2024, the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC) and the US National Gemini Office (US NGO) at NSF NOIRLab launched the new NOIRLab IRAF v2.18.

The goal of this modernization project was to provide a stable, fast, reliable, and accessible data reduction option to Gemini users while new and modern software is being developed for all facility instruments and modes. The limited scope of the project includes:

Port the GEMINI v1.17 data reduction package and its dependencies to 64-bit (See Release Notes).
Update IRAF core system and 27 external packages with needed OS and platform fixes.
Fix all OS, platform, and licensing issues in existing code.

Further details are given in the release notes.

User Support

For general inquiries, feedback, and installation issues, please use one of the email addresses listed below. Bugs within the code can also be reported through GitLab issues. Specific questions about data reduction using the GEMINI package should be submitted to the Gemini External Helpdesk.

iraf@noirlab.edu › usngo@noirlab.edu › Report issue on Gitlab › Gemini Helpdesk ›

For a large collection of many help resources, guides and manuals written for IRAF through the years, please visit the NOIRLab IRAF document collection.

Download and Release Notes

Click on the buttons below to download NOIRLab IRAF v2.18.1 for Mac and Linux platforms. For full download instructions, release notes, and documentation click here ›

Note: the self installer MUST be run from an empty directory.

Note: If the DMG installer was downloaded using a web browser, you may see security popups when installing or launching the applications. These can be avoided in several ways:

Once the DMG is downloaded, remove the quarantine attribute before opening the image with the following command:

% xattr -c NOIRLab-IRAF-v2181.dmg

Download the appropriate file using cURL instead of a web browser, e.g.:

% curl -OL https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/52167765/packages/generic/iraf-mac/2.18/NOIRLab-IRAF-v2181.dmg

References and Citations

If you are the primary author on a paper citing the use of NOIRLab IRAF, please include the following in the acknowledgments section in your publication:

NOIRLab IRAF is distributed by the Community Science and Data Center at NSF NOIRLab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Also, please include the following articles in the reference section of your paper:

Tody (1986) › Tody (1993) › Fitzpatrick et al. (2025) ›

Acknowledgments

Throughout the years, IRAF has also been tirelessly kept alive by a number of volunteers in the astronomy community (including iraf.net and IRAF Community Distribution), providing user support, data reduction tutorials and cookbooks, and maintaining the code. Those efforts have been appreciated.

IRAF is in part provided by the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC) at NSF NOIRLab, the national center for ground-based nighttime astronomy in the United States operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under cooperative agreement with the U.S. National Science Foundation.