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During 1983 the IRAS satellite has surveyed (almost) the whole sky. Most of the observations has been done as long scans along the sky. The main mission goal was to generate a list of point sources, the IRAS Point Source Catalog. The stability of the instrument, however, was of such quality that it is possible to combine adjacent scans into an image. These images have been published as e.g.\ the ISSA plates. They are very useful to get an overview of the infrared sky.
For studies where maximum sensitivity and spatial resolution is required, it is often useful to start processing anew from the raw data. E.g.\ the position of interesting sources can be inspected to a deeper level and low-level extended features can be made visible. This is possible with software developed at the Laboratory for Space Research in Groningen, the Netherlands. The complete IRAS raw data base (including Pointed Observations and Low Resolution Spectral data) is available on optical disks in a juke box and can be accessed by any astronomer through an e-mail and anonymous ftp server. The software is incorporated into the Groningen Image Processing SYstem (GIPSY). The data can be obtained as FITS images or as a GIPSY data set containing images or containing the individual (calibrated) scans. Obtaining the data as a GIPSY set requires GIPSY to be installed locally but offers a more flexable data handling.
