OpenAstronomy

Opening the eyes of research astronomy software to the whole world.

Technologies
python, c++, julia, numba
Topics
visualization, astronomy, solar physics, orbital mechanics, high-energy astrophysics
Opening the eyes of research astronomy software to the whole world.

OpenAstronomy is a collaboration between open source astronomy and astrophysics projects that are used by researchers and engineers around the world to study our universe either by analysing the data obtained from amazing instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope, the Square Kilometer Array or the Solar Dynamic Observatory, developing very sophisticated numerical models (eg. FLASH) or designing interplanetary trajectories for human-made spacecraft (eg. HORIZONS). The analysis of such data helps multiple types of research from being able to forecast solar storms to detect planets in other stars, from understanding how galaxies are formed to explain the expansion and the origin of the universe.

OpenAstronomy is currently formed by 12 organisations that develop tools for different aspects of astronomy. The range of topics covered by these projects is wide, for example:

  • Astropy is a general Python library for astronomy, providing common tools such as celestial coordinates, image processing, tabular data reading and writing, units and support for astronomy-specific file formats;
  • SunPy provides utilities for obtaining and representing solar physics data, with clients for some of the largest online solar physics data archives and solar specific analysis and visualisation code;
  • Glue is a data visualization application and library to explore relationships within and among related datasets.
  • Julia Astro is a set of packages for general astronomy and astrophysics analysis using Julia;
  • And more!

As a single organisation, we aim to strengthen collaborations between the different sub-organisations, and at the same time increase the awareness among our users on the capabilities of our "sister" projects.

2018 Program

Successful Projects

Contributor
Yatharth Rai
Mentor
dstansby, DavidPS
Organization
OpenAstronomy
Integrating Physical Units into HelioPy
HelioPy is a Python package which lets the user import space physics data from various sources and converts them into an easy-to-read and manipulates...
Contributor
Sushobhana Patra
Mentor
Adam Ginsburg, Miguel de Val-Borro
Organization
OpenAstronomy
Incorporating FITS Region, CRTF I/O and improving Regions.
Astropy's regions package is being developed to handle description and manipulation of astronomical regions on sky and pixel coordinates.The current...
Contributor
Prakhar Srivastava
Mentor
Mosè Giordano, Helge Eichhorn
Organization
OpenAstronomy
Porting Essential ERFA Functions to Julia
The JuliaAstro organization equips astronomers with tools developed in Julia language that they can include in their daily workflow and do impactful...
Contributor
Swapnil Sharma
Mentor
Matteo Bachetti, Daniela Huppenkothen, Abbie Stevens
Organization
OpenAstronomy
Phase-resolved oscillations
Quasi-periodic oscillations are the “heart-beat” of black holes and neutron stars: oscillations with changing phase and frequency, probably due to...
Contributor
Vishnunarayan K I
Mentor
Punyaslok Pattnaik, Nabobalis
Organization
OpenAstronomy
Transition to astropy time
SunPy uses python datetime module for handling almost all time related things. datetime is not the best choice for astronomy related projects due to...
Contributor
Nikita Astrakhantsev
Mentor
Siro Moreno Martín, Juan Luis Cano
Organization
OpenAstronomy
Improving propagators and perturbations account in Poliastro
The project is aimed at improvement of currently implemented Poliastro propagators (cure long-time propagation problems, measure performance, use...
Contributor
Ritiek Malhotra
Mentor
SolarDrew, Nicholas Murphy
Organization
OpenAstronomy
Implement a new Plasma metaclass in PlasmaPy
PlasmaPy is an open-source Python package and aims to provide a set of common functionality used in plasma physics. Currently it implements a Plasma...
Contributor
Manan Agarwal
Mentor
Kelle Cruz, Adrian Price-Whelan
Organization
OpenAstronomy
Learn Astropy
Learn Astropy is a website for the Astropy Learn ecosystem which consolidates Astropy documentation and associated examples, Astropy tutorials, and...