

Practical Python for Astronomers - blondie9x
https://python4astronomers.github.io/index.html

======
dstyrb
Nothing really productive to say to anyone except professional astronomers in
the room:

This is a similar tutorial we went through at ESA:
[http://python4esac.github.io/index.html](http://python4esac.github.io/index.html)

This is a more advanced machine learning focused module, go through the "book
figures" and example code is given. I also have a collection of slides on the
module if anyone is interested:
[http://www.astroml.org](http://www.astroml.org)

This is a padova isochrone query tool for python:
[https://github.com/jonathansick/padova](https://github.com/jonathansick/padova)

MCMC library, arguably better than pymc, written by astronomers:
[https://github.com/dfm/emcee](https://github.com/dfm/emcee)

Lifesaver on how to make fancy plots:
[http://matplotlib.org/gallery.html](http://matplotlib.org/gallery.html)

Not python specific, tools of the trade:
[http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr](http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr) (star chart with
survey data overlays),
[http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/topcat/](http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/topcat/)
(table manipulation and quick visualization for CSV, FITS, VOTable, IPAC,
etc.), [http://ds9.si.edu/site/Home.html](http://ds9.si.edu/site/Home.html)
(CCD image visualization), [http://iraf.noao.edu](http://iraf.noao.edu) (a
house of cards build by grad students for grad students where no one really
knows how it works but everyone seems to know about)

Please cite these resources if you use them.

Finally, a fun link for grad students:
[http://astrobites.com](http://astrobites.com)

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napperjabber
How about the inverse? Practical astronomy tools for python-developers? Just
getting into astronomy I'd love some tips on where to look for stuff like
this.

~~~
privong
What type of things are you interested in doing? There's a pretty wide range
of things in astronomy that lend themselves to the use of python (simulation
analysis, data calibration, data display, etc.). The astropy[0] effort is
creating a general-purpose package to aid in many areas. There are codes to
compute how radiation transfers through gas (e.g., powderday[1]), fitting
codes to observations of interstellar gas tracers (e.g., pyradexnest[2]), and
so on. Many are fairly specialized (the last two, for example) and perhaps not
as useful to a casual/amateur astronomer, but things like astropy would be
useful for calibrating images from CCD cameras, or computing when things are
visible in the sky.

If you reply with more specifics of what you're after, I can try to provide
more relevant examples.

[0] [http://www.astropy.org/](http://www.astropy.org/)

[1]
[http://powderday.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](http://powderday.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)

[2] [https://github.com/jrka/pyradexnest](https://github.com/jrka/pyradexnest)

~~~
napperjabber
Quick Reply: I'm currently studying orbital-mechanics. Starting with something
like Celestial Objects then downsizing to small-bodies later on. This has me
reading up on Newtonian physics. With a solid understanding there, I'll move
onto General Relativity.

My current open question (that may have been answered by this thread) was
where can I obtain star-charts? How do I interact with them. Etc.

~~~
stargazer-3
I follow privong's suggestion for stellarium for celestial body visualization.

However, if you want precision data as an input to your code, I would make use
of NASA JPL's ephemerides system [0]. It is precise and reliable. Another,
more pythonic option is pyephem [1], which allows you to "calculate positions
of stars and planets" at any given time.

Both options can be easily incorporated with astropy and APLpy, suggested by
privong, for calculations and plotting.

[0]
[http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?ephemerides](http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?ephemerides)

[1]
[https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyephem/](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyephem/)

~~~
napperjabber
Thanks, I'll look into this too!

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iandanforth
Normally I would rail against "import *" in the code, but under the
circumstances ...

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kf5jak
Is this an event/meeting coming up? Or is it supposed to be all online. Can't
really seem to get much information on "Practical Python for Astronomers" from
the site. It may just be me missing something...

~~~
vruiz
the first few links are just mostly references, you need to look a bit deeper.
Like:
[https://python4astronomers.github.io/astropy/fits.html](https://python4astronomers.github.io/astropy/fits.html)

~~~
CamperBob2
No, they need to make it a bit clearer. On the surface, it looks like yet
another "webinar"\- or MOOC-like scheme to impose a realtime schedule on a
presentation that has no inherent realtime requirement. (Yes, this is a pet
peeve of mine.)

It's even worse when the "Location and time" columns are all "TBD."

~~~
wicker
On the front page, it says "The content presented here is suitable for self-
study by those wishing to learn Python for astronomy or other scientific
research applications."

Right below that, it says "The workshop material here was presented in the
Spring of 2011 at the Harvard / Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. A range
of about 25 to 50 people participated in the different workshops, which were
1.5 hours in duration. Based on our experience a 2 hour slot would have been
more reasonable to allow time for the exercises and discussion."

It sounds like this was a series of workshops that were presented, and the
material collected and released as reference for anybody else who wants to
take initiative in their own communities.

This brings up a good question, though. What are the reasonable expectations
for people who make their reference materials online after they're done with
the initial conference talk or workshop, and have moved on to something else?

~~~
Bjartr
A thank you for putting up the materials at all when they had no obligation
to.

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theophrastus
For easy python access to the VSOP87 (and ELP 2000) theory, that is,
planetary/moon calculations, i've been impressed with the clean (ANSI C)
implementation of this "kepler" library with nice python hooks:
[http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/kepler](http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/kepler)

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jmspring
Working for an astronomy company while in grad school was the first place I
got to play with Fortran. It seems like Python is becoming the common language
for researchers in a variety of fields -- ML, etc.

I still have the Fortran Coloring Book around somewhere.

~~~
stargazer-3
According to a recent study on the current usage of programming languages in
astronomy -[http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.03989](http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.03989)
\- Fortran, quite popular in the old days, is still used by a quarter of
scientists in the field. Python has been growing very fast in the last five
years, eating away at the IDL share of astronomers.

