At this time, we have an M1 Mac with Ventura 13.4 installed. We (SIE) are ready to give some basic support for the installation of astronomical software in Mac OS X, though it becomes increasingly more difficult with newer macOS releases.
As our experience with this OS is not as good or estensive as with Linux, please bear with us if we are unable to help you with the installation of the package you need (other than the ones listed below).
As software installation in a Mac can be achieved through different means (downloading the .dmg file, using MacPorts, Homebrew, compiling from source, etc.), it helps if you try to keep the configuration of your Mac as much aligned as possible with that of our iMac, which we consider as the reference platform (data below as of September 2018):
There are several webpages addressing installation of software on macOS, buy they become rapidly obselete.
The AstroBetter site, among many interesting posts and discussions on science and technology in general, provides a lot of info and tips about Mac OS X for astronomy.
OS X Astro Tricks contain "tips and bug fixes for running astronomy-related software on OS X". (It seems that a website previously linked here, http://www.janerigby.net/JRR/osx.html – "OSX for Astronomers", has been closed).
Astroconda is an easy-to-install package which includes IRAF, DS9, and many tools to analyze data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, and others. It is based on Conda, an open-source software package management system provided and maintained by Continuum Analytics. It permits installation without requiring system privileges. For further details and for installation instructions, see https://astroconda.readthedocs.io/en/latest/.
However note that Astroconda comes with a 32-bit IRAF distribution, which will not run on macOS Catalina and later releases.
If you prefer to install yourself individual packages instead of an "all-in-one" distribution such as Scisoft, here go some pointers.
| C and Fortran compilers | We are currently using the compilers from MacPorts.
In general you will find multiple gcc/gfortran versions in your Mac (the macOS's one,
the one installed with MacPorts, other you got from other channels), and this will be
bound to cause some confusion (for instance compilation of some particular package
succeeds with one compiler and fails with another). In general, to specify which
gcc compiler you wish to use, just define the variable: export CC="/opt/local/bin/gcc" (this selects the MacPorts version). |
|---|---|
| DAOPHOT | I managed to compile (with gfortran) and install DAOPHOT in 64bit, linking against IRAF v2.16 libraries. Some changes were required in the Makefile, and one of the source files had to be edited to correct a statement that threw an error upon compilation. If you have a legitimate copy of DAOPHOT's source code and wish to install it on a Mac, get in touch with us. |
| DS9 | Download and install the appropriate DS9 binary from https://sites.google.com/cfa.harvard.edu/saoimageds9/download. |
| HEAsoft | Compilation is straightforward, you only need to be careful about what
specific compilers you use. See the HEAsoft
Supported platforms page for details. The combination of compilers/flags
that worked for me was: export CC=/usr/bin/clang export CXX=/usr/bin/clang++ export FC=/opt/local/bin/gfortran export PYTHON=/opt/local/bin/python3.10 export PERL=/usr/bin/perl export PATH=/usr/bin:${PATH} |
| IDL | For IAC users, instructions on how to install IDL in a Mac can be found in the webpage: IDL installation (internal access only) There you can also find how to use the IAC floating licenses, or temporarily borrow an IDL license. |
| IRAF | For macOS versions Mojave and earlier, you can install IRAF for MacIntel following the "quick and easy" procedure
described in the SIEpedia article: How
to install IRAF 2.16 in Mac OS X. For macOS Catalina and later versions, you an use it in a Ubuntu virtual machine as described in Installation of IRAF on macOS with Multipass and Ubuntu. |
| LaTeX | MacTeX seems to be the most popular LaTeX distribution for Mac. We installed it from http://www.tug.org/mactex/. You may also wish to install TeXShop. Please read the instructions on the MacTex webpage about configuring GUI programs to use the appropriate symlink to the executables directory. |
| Mathematica | Ask us for the .dmg file to install the latest Mathematica release. When launching Mathematica for the first time, click on "Other ways to activate", select "Connect to a network license server" and type "zuko" (without quotation marks) in the Server name box. Then click "Activate". That's it. |
| MIDAS | You will have to compile the source code yourself. Visit: http://www.eso.org/sci/software/esomidas/ for further details about MIDAS and for download/installation instructions. The installations was a bit complicated with several problems, which however could be overcome (thanks to some tips found on the MIDAS help mailing list). Ask us if interested. |
| Python | Currently we are using Python 3.10 (plus several python scientific packages such as numpy, scipy,
matplotlib, etc.), all installed using MacPorts, following the instructions
in MacPorts
Python installation on Mac - 10 easy steps (dated, but still valid – should work
well also for Python3). Alternatively, one can install the Anaconda Python distribution (which however we don't use and do not recommend either). |
| Starlink | We downloaded and installed the 2021A release for macOS (64-bit, macOS 10.14.6 Mojave). It can be run on a M1/M2 Mac using Rosetta (see https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211861 . |
| SuperMongo | Supermongo works fine. I had to compile and install the version patched for Lion (it
fixes a conflict with the getline library). For installation
in Mountain Lion, I had to work around a problem with bison. Then I simply used the binary built this way on all newer macOS releases. IAC users can ask as for installation instructions. To fix the problem with line editing and command recalling, from the SM prompt type termtype xterm. Non-IAC users must ask the SM authors for a copy of the source (or binary) code. |