At a time when the United Nations, in collaboration with Wolfram Research,
has selected the Mathematica software package to inform developing countrie
s about available scientific tools, it is important to review other choices
of software being used by active scientists around the world. For observat
ional astronomers with large volumes of digital data to be analyzed, the ma
in challenges are data reductions, image handling, model comparisons, inter
active fits, data simulations and visualizations, etc. There are several go
od alternative software packages such as: AIPS*,IRAF dagger, MIDAS double d
agger and IDL . The first three packages can be obtained free of charge by
contacting the sponsoring institutions. Information can be obtained, via th
e World Wide Web, from the URLs indicated in the footnotes. IDL is a commer
cial package that can be used in all kinds of computer platforms and is ext
ensively used in space astronomy (e.g., main language of software reduction
packages of missions like IUE, HST ROSAT, SOHO, etc). All of these package
s are able to handle some of the most common commercial and scientific data
formats (FITS, CDF and HDF). These software packages provide general tools
for image processing and data reduction with emphasis on, but not limited
to, astronomical applications. All of these packages have good active custo
mer support strategies, the most useful ones being periodic newsletters, re
lated meetings (e.g., annual meeting on Astronomical Data Analysis Software
and Systems), software user groups, bulletin board discussions, FAQs, etc.
The purpose of this paper is to present the relative usefulness, available
platforms, associated libraries, related resources, of these software pack
ages and the many already existing and potential astronomical applications.