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AstroLib is a growing set of astronomical utility libraries for Python. We hope it will fulfill a similar role to the ASTRON library for IDL in future, providing the core tools needed for astronomical Python applications. The developers are an informal group of collaborators from several institutions, led by STScI. Active Python coders are welcome to contribute to our effort (see below). You can find the repository and its Trac site here:
svn: http://svn6.assembla.com/svn/astrolib/
trac: https://trac6.assembla.com/astrolib
End user documentation (from Sphinx) will be posted on astrolib.org in the near future. This wiki page is for contributors to document ideas about functionality, structure and standards for AstroLib. Related discussion occurs on the Astropy mailing list. We are happy to receive community feedback on our plans and development as they progress.
Our effort naturally tends to be focused on capabilities that are important for our own projects, but we want to keep the code useful for others and set a framework that allows you to build on what we provide. Those with good ideas and time to contribute will find that the lead developer team does not expect a monopoly on defining how things are done (with the exception that authors are strongly encouraged to meet some documentation and testing standards). Nevertheless, we would like to maintain some overall coherence and self-consistency within AstroLib, through ongoing negotiation between authors.
Related Efforts underway: AstroLibAssociatedEfforts
Approaches to consider: AstroLibPhilosophy
Array package: AstroLib uses numpy (that replaces both Numeric and numarray). Some existing pages specify numarray; these pages are out of date and will be updated as soon as resources permit.
For reference; here is the link to the documentation for the IDL "ASTRON library": http://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov/contents.html.
Specific Library Functionality:
- FITS WCS standards: AstroLibWCS:
Astronomical Coordinate Systems: AstroLibCoordsHome
Dates and Times: AstroLibDatesTimes:
Photometric utilities: AstroLibPhotometry:
Utilities to read and write ascii data from and to arrays: AstroAsciiData:
- Others?
Standards
Documentation Standards: AstroLibDocStandards
Testing Standards: AstroLibTestStandards
The logo was designed by Nadia Dencheva. Thanks to Bill Love for permission to use the Python image in the Astrolib logo (http://www.bluechameleon.org)
Contact / contributing
Queries about AstroLib and SVN access should be directed to perry or sienkiew (stsci.edu). If you'd like to get started as a contributor, please sign up for the Astropy mailing list. For small, one-off or first-time changes to the code, you can email a patch to the relevant module maintainer. We will provide commit access for longer-term developers.
To edit these wiki pages, you need to sign up for an account at http://scipy.org/UserPreferences.
Module maintainers
- asciitable Tom Aldcroft
(Maintainer list to be completed.)