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Starlink software

Starlink was a UK-wide computer management and software resource for astronomy. It is ceased to exist as a funded operation for the most part, but the software continues to live on. Some of it is quite useful, in particular 'gaia' for image display. If you need access to any Starlink software such as 'gaia' you need to do the following. First you need to edit the file $HOME/.cshrc (assuming that your SHELL environment variable is set to tcsh). This file gets runs every time you log in or open a terminal, so it is where you put commands to define your setup such as access to software. The '.' at the start means that is a hidden file, which you can reveal using 'ls -a'. Put the following line in your .cshrc file:

alias starlink 'source /star/etc/cshrc; source /star/etc/login'
Save the file. Now when you open a new terminal and type 'starlink' it should run the above command, and you ought then to be able to type 'gaia' and get the gaia window up as well as gain access to many other programs such as 'kappa' and 'figaro'.