1 Introduction

TARA (Tools for ACIS Real-time Analysis) is a collection of computer programs which scientists use to analyze ACIS calibration data. Most of these tools are written in the IDL language. Please see http://www.astro.psu.edu/software/idl.html for general information on running IDL in the Astronomy Department at Penn State and see Section 9 for IDL configurations recommended for running TARA software.

Many other tools (CIAO, FTOOLS, XSPEC, etc.) written elsewhere are of course also useful for analyzing x-ray data. Please see http://www.astro.psu.edu/software/ for information on all the analysis packages that are installed in our department.

Please contact Pat Broos (patb@astro.psu.edu) or Scott Koch (tsk@astro.psu.edu) if you have problems, questions, or suggestions for improving these tools. Your comments may help other ACIS analysts.