An astropython.org visitor writes:I'm using Matplotlib to make some figures out of FITS images. I really would like to find a way to do 2 way communication with DS9. I know there are ways to send an image to DS9 from Python at a command line. But what I would like to do is send DS9 an image, display it there and set the stretc... View More
Tom Rice writes:I'm looking for a package in Python / Numpy / SciPy that provides robust statistical functions, such as the Resistant Mean or the Robust standard deviation - essentially, a Python analogue of the IDL Robust Statistics package described here:http://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov/contents.html#C17http://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.g... View More
Astronomy at PyCon US 2011The PyCon 2011 Atlanta conference featured several talks on the use of Python in science, engineering, and data analysis. Two of the talks were related to astronomy.Maciej Fijalkowski, one of the developer of PyPy, works at SKA South Africa and he talked about how SKA South Africa is using Python for the day... View More
Astronomy at PyCon US 2011The PyCon 2011 Atlanta conference featured several talks on the use of Python in science, engineering, and data analysis. Two of the talks were related to astronomy.Maciej Fijalkowski, one of the developer of PyPy, works at SKA South Africa and he talked about how SKA South Africa is using Python for the day... View More
The German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory is creating a Data Center Helper Suite of software to provide a "publishing infrastructure for the Virtual Observatory, including a flexible component for ingesting and mapping data, integrated metadata handling with a publishing registry, and support for many VO protocols and st... View More
Michael Sims of NASA Ames is giving a talk at PyCon 2011 titled "Greasing the Wheels of Exploration with Python".He will be talking about the software system, AutoPul, written in Python, which is used to automate certain operations of the Mars Exploration Rovers.The talk is on March 13th and slides should be online a few da... View More
Question from Dan Feldman:Hi, I'm working on writing or finding a Python script/module that can automate the measuring of equivalent widths for both emission and absorption lines, fitting various line profiles (e.g. Gaussian profiles, Voigt Profiles). How do I go about this?For instance, Ben Weiner commented on a blog post here h... View More
Question from user Christoph:Does anyone know a command line tool or python module that can convert a HEALPIX FITS image to a projection like e.g. CARtesian or AIToff?Aladin can convert to / from HEALPIX, but I need something non-GUI. As far as I can tell MONTAGE and SWARP can't handle HEALPIX, is that correct?
View MoreHow Python Slithered into Astronomy, by Perry GreenfieldPerry Greenfield gave the keynote speech at the Scipy.in 2010 conference that took place in Hyderabad, India, during December 13-18 2010. He talks about why STScI began to use Python. He also makes some "Random observations about scientific programming". Concerning sci... View More
Version 0.5.0 of asciitable, an extensible module for reading and writing ASCII tables, is now available. This release features a new function to guess the table format from the supported formats within asciitable. This function is now called by default within asciitable.read(). http://cxc.harvard.edu/contrib/asciitable/#guess-ta... View More
Version 0.4.0 of asciitable, an extensible module for reading and writing ASCII tables, is now available. This release adds the capability to handle bad or missing values in the input table. Thanks to Moritz Guenther for contributing this new feature. Please see:http://cxc.harvard.edu/contrib/asciitable/#replace-bad-or-missing-val... View More
Based on user feedback I've made a few long-overdue tweaks to the astropython.org web site. Changes include: Darker text and header colors Included the cool logo that Eli Bressert made The contributor user name is shown in blog entries and RSS feeds (no more Astropython Contributor!) Put some more explanatory text on... View More
HPCWire's interview with Argonne National Lab's William Scullin, on the adoption of Python in high performance computing. "While there has always been an emphasis on reducing the time it takes to perform a computation, Python has truly shined in improving scientific computing by taking the work out of programming and red... View More
If you are looking to convince a colleague (or yourself) to use Python for research, check out 10 Reasons Python Rocks for Research. It goes into just enough detail without getting too long, with much of the focus on Python as a language for scientists rather than the research-oriented tools that are available. Some cre... View More
Astropython.org visitor Danny writes:"I have a question maybe somebody in this community can answer regarding coordinate lines drawn by Basemap [within Matplotlib].Does anyone know if its possible to draw onto a map, grid lines (meridians and parallels) using a different coordinate system. For example an astronomical image plot... View More