Frequently Asked Questions

How to Easily Install Dependencies

Lightning requires the IDL Astronomy User’s Library, IDL Coyote, and Craig Markwardt’s MPFIT library. All three will need to be installed and added to your IDL path before using Lightning. To easily download the dependencies, we recommend making a new directory, changing into the new directory, and using the following shell commands:

git clone https://github.com/wlandsman/IDLAstro.git
git clone https://github.com/idl-coyote/coyote.git
wget https://pages.physics.wisc.edu/~craigm/idl/down/mpfit.tar.gz
mkdir mpfit
tar -xf mpfit.tar.gz -C mpfit
rm mpfit.tar.gz