NOIRLab IRAF v2.18.1 for MacOS and Linux


Release: November 2025

Introduction

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. This release provides a fully supported system capable of running natively on modern hardware.

The focus of the v2.18.1 work includes:

The project provides a bridge solution until the DRAGONS software is available for all facility instruments and modes, as well as additional benefits to the wider IRAF community. Results show a 10-20X speedup of reductions using the native 64-bit software compared to the virtualized 32-bit solutions now in use. Results are even better on Apple M1/M2 platforms where the additional overhead of Intel CPU emulation can be eliminated.

Contact us: iraf@noirlab.edu   usngo@noirlab.edu  

Contents


MacOS Systems

System Requirements

Dependencies
Before You Begin