Introduction

The Munich Image Data Analysis System, MIDAS, is developed and maintained by the European Southern Observatory. Its main goal is to provide the astronomical community with software tools for both general image processing and analysis, and for the reduction of data acquired at ESO telescopes. Although originally developed on a VAX/VMS system, since 1988 MIDAS is available for systems with a VAX/VMS operating systems, or with one of the main flavors of the UNIX systems.

For VMS systems MIDAS is distributed by ESO on the following media:

- 1/2" Tape, 1600/6250 bpi density magtape, BACKUP format.
- 4mm Cartridge tape, DDS/DAT, BACKUP format.
- Anonymous ftp from ftphost.hq.eso.org. Compressed TAR format

This document describes the installation of MIDAS on computer systems running under the VMS operating system. It contains all information needed to ensure a smooth installation of the MIDAS software.

This version of MIDAS is built on the following set of interfaces:

• for access to the data base the so-called "standard and tables interfaces" defined by ESO. For a description see the MIDAS Environment Manual, revision 1.1.

• for graphics applications the interfaces of the AGL package from ASTRONET are used. For a description see the AGL User's Guide.

• for image display applications the IDI interfaces are used. For a description see the IDI interface document.

Throughout this document a number of typographic conventions are used. These conventions are given below.

• Italic type style is used to emphasize a term or statement in the body of a paragraph:

• Typewriter type style is used:
  • to show, within the body of the text, command lines or options that should be typed verbatim on the screen;
  • to show, within examples, computer-generated input/output or the contents of files.
• Bold type style only used to emphasize a very important note or remark for the installation of MIDAS.