Astropy: A community Python package for astronomy

¹ Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
² Department of Astronomy, Yale University, PO Box 208101, New Haven, CT 06510, USA
³ Hubble Fellow  
⁴ Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
⁵ Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
⁶ Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
⁷ Department of Astronomy, Columbia University, Pupin Hall, 550W 120th St., New York, NY 10027, USA
⁸ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, 50 Saint George Street, Toronto, ON M5S3H4, Canada
⁹ Argonne National Laboratory, High Energy Physics Division, 9700 South Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439, USA
¹⁰ Department of Astronomy, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
¹¹ S.V.National Institute of Technology, 395007 Surat., India
¹² Independent developer  
¹³ Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, PO Box 103980, 69029 Heidelberg, Germany
¹⁴ European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany
¹⁵ Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, OAMP, Université Aix-Marseille et CNRS, 13388 Marseille, France
¹⁶ ETH Zürich, Institute for Astronomy, Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse 27, Building HIT, Floor J, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland
¹⁷ Gemini Observatory, Casilla 603, La Serena, Chile
¹⁸ LIGO Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
¹⁹ Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA
²⁰ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Louisiana State University, Nicholson Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
²¹ Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University, Mount Stromlo Observatory, via Cotter Road, Weston Creek ACT 2611, Australia
²² SAAO, PO Box 9, Observatory 7935, 7925 Cape Town, South Africa
²³ Joint Astronomy Centre, 660 N. A‘ohōkū Place, Hilo, HI 96720, USA
²⁴ Department of Astronomy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
²⁵ Gemini Observatory, 670 N. A‘ohōkū Place, Hilo, HI 96720, USA
²⁶ Oxford Astrophysics, Denys Wilkinson Building, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH, UK
²⁷ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK
²⁸ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, X-ray Astrophysics Lab Code 662, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
²⁹ Laboratoire AIM, CEA Saclay, Bât. 709, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
³⁰ Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany

Received: 12 June 2013
Accepted: 23 July 2013

Abstract

We present the first public version (v0.2) of the open-source and community-developed Python package, Astropy. This package provides core astronomy-related functionality to the community, including support for domain-specific file formats such as flexible image transport system (FITS) files, Virtual Observatory (VO) tables, and common ASCII table formats, unit and physical quantity conversions, physical constants specific to astronomy, celestial coordinate and time transformations, world coordinate system (WCS) support, generalized containers for representing gridded as well as tabular data, and a framework for cosmological transformations and conversions. Significant functionality is under activedevelopment, such as a model fitting framework, VO client and server tools, and aperture and point spread function (PSF) photometry tools. The core development team is actively making additions and enhancements to the current code base, and we encourage anyone interested to participate in the development of future Astropy versions.