4 ms·

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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
  - privong 11y ago
    The simplest way forward is to use something like stellarium[0] or xephem[1] to make charts and view/adjust them in real-time. But that involves no python. :) A more complicated option would be to program one up using various tools in the astropy library. You could retrieve catalogs of objects and plot their positions using the built in coordinate system tools (wcs) with aplpy[2] or matplotlib. [0] http://www.stellarium.org/ http://www.stellarium.org/ [1] http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/ http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/ [2] https://aplpy.github.io/ https://aplpy.github.io/
    - napperjabber 11y ago
      I'm not to worried about the toolsets. I just want an amazing community. Thanks! On my next break, I'll dig into all of this!
  - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
    Tip: you will also want to study structure-preserving numerical integration methods if you want to simulate planetary orbits. The book by Hairer, Wanner and Lubich is good (but not for the faint-of-heart).
    - napperjabber 11y ago
      Thanks! I'll look into it.
  - ergl 11y ago
    I haven't used it, but maybe poliastro is what you're looking for? https://poliastro.github.io https://poliastro.github.io Disclaimer: I'm a friend of the author
    - napperjabber 11y ago
      Thanks, I'll look into this too!
  - stargazer-3 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      Thanks, I'll look into this too!
  - antognini 11y ago
    Hey there! I'm a grad student in my last year and my research is in orbital dynamics. I've recently started getting into the rebound package written by Hanno Rein: https://github.com/hannorein/rebound https://github.com/hannorein/rebound There's some tutorials that come with it. It can also read data from JPL's ephemerides to calculate orbits of various planets and minor bodies in the Solar System. It has a couple of different integrators (some symplectic, some not), but one of them (IAS15) is new and (as far as I know) the best for long-term integrations of Solar-System-like systems. Also if you're interested in studying the long-term evolution of hierarchical triples, I wrote a Python package to study that: https://github.com/joe-antognini/kozai https://github.com/joe-antognini/kozai As far as star charts, you can do things like that with AstroPy. If you want the coordinates of stars, look into astropy.vo, and then if you want to plot them, you can do that with some of the functions in astropy.wcs.

privong 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.
- privong 11y ago
  The simplest way forward is to use something like stellarium[0] or xephem[1] to make charts and view/adjust them in real-time. But that involves no python. :) A more complicated option would be to program one up using various tools in the astropy library. You could retrieve catalogs of objects and plot their positions using the built in coordinate system tools (wcs) with aplpy[2] or matplotlib. [0] http://www.stellarium.org/ http://www.stellarium.org/ [1] http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/ http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/ [2] https://aplpy.github.io/ https://aplpy.github.io/
  - napperjabber 11y ago
    I'm not to worried about the toolsets. I just want an amazing community. Thanks! On my next break, I'll dig into all of this!
- semi-extrinsic 11y ago
  Tip: you will also want to study structure-preserving numerical integration methods if you want to simulate planetary orbits. The book by Hairer, Wanner and Lubich is good (but not for the faint-of-heart).
  - napperjabber 11y ago
    Thanks! I'll look into it.
- ergl 11y ago
  I haven't used it, but maybe poliastro is what you're looking for? https://poliastro.github.io https://poliastro.github.io Disclaimer: I'm a friend of the author
  - napperjabber 11y ago
    Thanks, I'll look into this too!
- stargazer-3 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    Thanks, I'll look into this too!
- antognini 11y ago
  Hey there! I'm a grad student in my last year and my research is in orbital dynamics. I've recently started getting into the rebound package written by Hanno Rein: https://github.com/hannorein/rebound https://github.com/hannorein/rebound There's some tutorials that come with it. It can also read data from JPL's ephemerides to calculate orbits of various planets and minor bodies in the Solar System. It has a couple of different integrators (some symplectic, some not), but one of them (IAS15) is new and (as far as I know) the best for long-term integrations of Solar-System-like systems. Also if you're interested in studying the long-term evolution of hierarchical triples, I wrote a Python package to study that: https://github.com/joe-antognini/kozai https://github.com/joe-antognini/kozai As far as star charts, you can do things like that with AstroPy. If you want the coordinates of stars, look into astropy.vo, and then if you want to plot them, you can do that with some of the functions in astropy.wcs.