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AstroLib? Project Page

Astrolib is an astronomical utility library for Python analogous to the ASTRON library for IDL. There's a (mostly inactive) wiki that includes discussion of its design philosophy, requirements, envisioned components, etc.

Astrolib presently has six active components:

- asciidata , for managing some commonly used file formats

Download version 1.1
Browse the documentation

- pysynphot, an intended replacement for synphot

Pysynphot is a synthetic photometry software package suitable for either library or interactive use. Intended as a modern-language successor to the IRAF/STSDAS synphot package, it provides improved algorithms that address known shortcomings in synphot, and its object-oriented design is more easily extensible than synphot's task-oriented approach. Written in Python, it will run under PyRAF, and a backwards compatibility mode is provided that will recognize all spectral and throughput tables, obsmodes, and spectral expressions used by synphot, to facilitate the transition for legacy code.

Features:

no IRAF dependencies
improved precision arithmetic
improved handling of wavelength sampling
extensive graphics capabilities available using matplotlib/pylab

Download:

the v0.55 version, complete with all data needed for full functionality, and two demo scripts. This version was demonstrated at ADASS 2008 on 4 November 2008, Quebec City.

Documentation:

Browse the user documentation
Browse the v0.55 API documentation (updated 28 Oct 08)
Browse the PysynphotInstallationGuide

Earlier versions:

the v0.45 version demonstrated at SciPy?08 (Aug 2008), software only
the associated throughput files necessary for full functionality
You may also wish to obtain the spectra, both HST calibration spectra and model spectra, that are used in some of the examples

- coords , for managing astronomical coordinate systems (http://www.scipy.org/AstroLibCoordsHome)

Current release v0.37 (5 Jan 2009), r768: adds leap second
- Download source
- Browse release notes
- Browse API documentation (same as v0.3 API)

Previous release v0.3 (12 Feb 2007)
- Download source

Download TPM Manual (pdf)

- tfit , for photometry of mixed-resolution data sets (a software project by the GOODS team)

TFIT is presently an inactive project.

Read the paper published in the Nov 2007 issue of PASP

Current release is v1.2.1. This is a bugfix release:
- Read the release notes
- Download TFIT v1.2.1 (Jul 18, 2008)
- Download TFIT v1.2.1 test dataset
- Browse TFIT User's Guide
- No further releases of TFIT are presently planned.

- pywcs

pywcs is a set of routines for handling the FITS World Coordinate System (WCS) standard. It is a thin wrapper around the high- and mid-level interfaces of Dr. Mark Calabretta's WCSLIB.

pywcs is currently alpha-quality software. The current version is focused on providing basic access to the functionality in WCSLIB. Future releases will have better integration with PyFITS and more Python-specific utilities.

Contact: Michael Droettboom