ESO-MIDAS 
is
the acronym for the European Southern Observatory -
Munich Image Data Analysis System which
is developed and maintained by the European Southern Observatory. The
official name, ESO-MIDAS, is a registered trademark. In this manual
the name MIDAS is used as an abbreviation of ESO-MIDAS. The MIDAS
system provides general tools for image processing and data reduction
with emphasis on astronomical applications including special reduction
packages for ESO instruments at La Silla. The system is available for
both VAX/VMS and UNIX systems.
A large number of contributions have been made to MIDAS by people
inside and outside ESO. We greatly appreciate and acknowledge these
efforts. A full list of acknowledgements can be found in
Appendix 
.
This manual gives the necessary information to do useful data
reduction with the system, whereas a detailed technical description of
the design and software interfaces can be found in other documents
(see Section ). These documents also
describe how users can write and add their own application programs to
the system.