Links to other Earth Science related IDL/ENVI sites

General IDL Resources

ITT Visual Information Solutions (formerly RSI).

ITT Visual Information solutions is the manufacturer of both IDL and ENVI and this is the Web site to obtain a summary of functionality, pricing and supported machines, or to download a demo. The site also contains a section of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) , IDL and ENVI Tech Tips , a fairly large User contributed library of routines , and Web seminars on using ENVI and IDL. The IDL V6.4 documentation is available online.

IDL Forums

The main forum for discussion and questions about IDL and ENVI is the Usenet newsgroup comp.lang.idl-pvwave which has a searchable archive at the google.com Web site. ITTVIS also maintains a less active User forum . Frequently asked questions (FAQ) about IDL are probably most likely to be answered in one of the several hundred (!) IDL Programming Tips and Tricks and IDL Bug reports available in David Fanning's Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming.

Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming

Excellent tips on IDL programming from independent IDL consultant David Fanning. Also includes a collection of user reports on IDL anomalies, and over 100 very useful IDL utility procedures including a NetCDF browser. Includes many useful tips on map projections, HDF-4 files, and using principal component analysis with Landsat data. David is also the author of the book IDL Programming Techniques

Marc Buie's IDL Library

Mainly astronomy but includes some math and image process routines, and a MYSQL interface to IDL

ICG (Institute for Chemistry and Dynamic of the Geosphere) Library 

This large library of IDL programs at the ForschungsZentrum Jülich in Germany includes procedures for conversion of IDL variables and structures into html code, plotting, programming tools, widgets, and a interface to a facsimile differential equation solver for chemical reactions. Version 6.03 was released in March 2006.

JHU (Johns Hopkins U.) APL/S1R IDL Information Page

Ray Sterner runs this Web site at the JHU Applied Physics Laboratory which includes several IDL tutorials, and a pointer to the large JHU/APL/S1R IDL Library. Last updated 29 Aug 2006.

IDL Astronomy Library Home Page

Besides astronomy routines, this library also includes IDL routines for math and statistics, plotting, structure and string processing. The search page allows a search on keywords from many libraries. The University of Washington search library includes more libraries but has not been updated since 2000.

Ken Bowman's IDL page

Ken Bowman (Texas A&M) is the author of the book "An Introduction to Programming with IDL" for beginning programmers. This site includes example programs from the book and tips and tricks for using IDL with Mac OS X.

Rob Dimeo's IDL Library

This IDL library the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is particularly useful for PAN a general-purpose curve fitting utility with a graphical user interface (last updated May 2005). There is also an IDL course manual providing an introduction to widget and object programming

Epsilon.Nought

This site is maintained by Andreas Reigber as a resource about radar remote sensing. It includes IDL software for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) such as I.D.I.O.T. (InSAR Deformation Inspection and Observation Tool for ENVISAT data. The site also includes a general IDL library which contains tools to extend IDL capabilities in linear algebra and Fourier transforms.

Michael Galloy's Resources for IDL Developers

This readable blog by a former RSI instructor and consultant discusses IDL (and non-IDL) techniques for visualization and information design. He includes Google Maps and Google Earth lookups for ENVI, and a package IDLDoc to produce documentation for any IDL code.

Liam Gumley's IDL Library

This IDL library at the University of Wisconsin includes satellite image mapping tools, an HDF-SDS GUI reader, and a visualization tool for MODIS Airborne Simulator imagery. Last updated 28 August 2000. Liam has also written a book about Practical IDL Programming

Mark Hadfield's Motley IDL Library

This IDL library at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand includes several Object Graphics classes, a base class for widget applications and several applications built on it, functions that make it easy to represent scaled data on axes, classes for accessing netCDF files and several utility routines. Last updated June 2007

Craig Markwardt's IDL Library

This IDL library at the University of Wisconsin includes many well-documented plotting, utility, ephemeris, mathematics and robust curve-fitting procedures. Last updated 17 Dec 2007.

Mathew Craig's TeXtoIDL Software

This software translates the TeX character set into the (often obscure) IDL plotting symbol codes. Updated June 2004.

Pavel Romashkin's IDL Library

This IDL library includes a 2-D plotting DISPLAY widget (last updated May 2003).

Solar Software Library

Includes a very large number of general and solar-related IDL procedures accessible via FTP . Search pages for these procedures are available at the Yohkoh Web Page at Lockheed and the SOHO search page . Also, Dominic Zarro has written IDL code using object oriented methods for analyzing solar images, an introduction to Programming with IDL Objects: Why and how to do it", and a guide to using IDL Sockets to manipulate files over a Web server. Many additional routines are available from the UCSD (University of California) Solar & Heliospheric Physics group.

IDLWAVE - Gnu IDL Emacs Mode

The Emacs mode for IDL is maintained by JD Smith at the University of Arizona. Version 6.1 was released in June 2007 and is included in Emacs 22.

Earth Science IDL/ENVI Software Sites

Mort Canty's Site

Mort Canty (Jülich Research Center) is the author of " Image Analysis, Classification and Change Detection in Remote Sensing, With Algorithms for ENVI/IDL. (2006)". His site contains ENVI extensions and IDL examples for his textbook and includes routines for clustering algorithms, radiometric calibration, and classification methods.

National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) IDL Tools

This site contains sophisticated IDL packages for reading and visualizing altimetry and atmospheric data from the ICESat/GLAS instrument. There are also access tools to browse and visualize P-cube and TOVS Polar Pathfinder (Path-P) data files (IDL V6.1 or later). Terry Haran has written IDL tools to extract data arrays from an HDF-EOS file and write them to separate flat binary files.

Ocean Color IDL Library Software

This site at NASA/Goddard includes both instrument specific software (for MODIS, SeaWIFS, OCTS) and general utilities, including many from other libraries. Categories include atmospheric correction, HDF functions, navigation and visualization. Either the entire package or individual procedures can be downloaded. SEADAS (SeaWiFS Data Analysis System) is a comprehensive image analysis package for the processing, display, analysis, and quality control of ocean color data. The latest version is 5.1 Update 06 released September 07.

ASSET (Assimilation of Envisat Data) IDL Code

The European ASSET team makes available their IDL code to assimilate Envisat data into numerical weather prediction models.

CAMA toolkit

CAMA is a large IDL package to quickly analyze fairly large volumes of OMI level-2 data. Last updated October 2007.

GRIDVIEW

GRIDVIEW is an IDL program that can be used to view, measure and produce graphics of gridded data. A user-friendly, interactive menu interface provides various display and measurement options. The tool can be used to view and study any gridded data, but it was specifically designed to study the gridded topographic data products of the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) instrument. GRIDVIEW has become a basic tool in the study of visible and buried basins on Mars, investigations of the dichotomy boundary, examination of the Medusa Fossae formation, calculation of sediment fill in large craters and measurement of volcano geomatry and volume.

IMAGE spacecraft analysis software

The IMAGE spacecraft was launched in March 2000 to study the Earth's magnetosphere, and IDL analysis software includes EUV_IMTOOL , a image processing widget for images from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUV), and software for the Far-Ultraviolet Imager (FUV) . IDL interfaces are available to read the Universal Data Format (UDF).

HIPHOP (Handy IDL-Program for HDF-Output)

HIPHOP is a graphical user interface (GUI) based IDL program written by Domink Brunner (ETH - Zurich) that largely facilitates the visualisation and analysis of 2D, 3D and 4D (including time-dimension) geo-referenced earth science data such as model-calculated meteorological fields or trace gas distributions. Also available are individual programs for atmospheric science applications. Last updated July 2004.

NASA/Langley IDL Tools

The Atmospheric Science Data Center at NASA/LRC distribute IDL tools for reading their available data products, These include VIEW_HDF a visualization and analysis tool for HDF and HDF-EOS data. Also included are IDL utilties are for reading data and metadata values stored in MISR (Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer) data products, and a MOPITT (Measurement of Pollution in the Troposphere) Level 2 viewer tool.

LiDAR Tools for ENVI

The Boise Center Aerospace Laboratory has developed IDL tools for processing LiDAR using ENVI. Last updated October 2007.

MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) software

The MODIS website includes IDL tools by Eric Moody (NASA/GSFC), Paul Hubanks (NASA/GSFC) and others for visualizing MODIS products

VAPOR: Visualization & Analysis Platform

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research has developed VAPOR, an open-source visualization tool for data sets that are time-varying, multivariate, and possessing very high spatial resolution. It is tailored to the needs of the geoscience computational fluid dynamics community, and includes IDL extensions. Last updated January 2007.

MODO: the Modtran Interface

MODO is a graphical front-end to the MODTRAN4 radiative transfer code developed by the ReSe Applications Schl�pfer. It has been created to ease the modelling of the at-sensor radiance for hyperspectral sensors but also for generic radiometric simulation tasks. A free 30 day license is key available before requiring purchase of the software. Last updated April 2005

Solar Irradiance Platform

The Solar Irradiance Platform produces the variable, full solar spectrum in assorted spectral formats for historical, nowcast, and forecast applications. Requires IDL 5.6 or later. The Solar Irradiance Platform is a available at a very modest cost for individual or institutional customers and a single-use 30-day evaluation version is available.