Mailman 3 মে 2010 - AstroPy

Updated telarchive (v1.6) + fetchsdss
by Peter Erwin 29 মে, 2010

29 মে, 2010

Hi, This is an announcement of an updated version (1.6) of my quick-and- dirty, Python-based telescope archive search tool, available here: http://www.mpe.mpg.de/~erwin/code/ (A short summary of what it does is appended below.) New features (and fixes): - Now includes searches for Spitzer observations - Various minor bug fixes [previous summary, updated:] "Telarchive" is a command-line program which simplifies searching various public telescope archives to see if they might have data on a particular astronomical object or part of the sky. This includes the HST and general MAST archive, as well as the ESO, UKIRT, CFHT, and AAT ground-based archives, and imaging data from Data Release 7 (DR7) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The NOAO Science Archive is also included, though it has very little publically available data at this point. Recent additions are Spitzer, SMOKA (the archive for Subaru and several older Japanese telescopes), and the Gemini Science Archive. The Isaac Newton Group Archive is also searched, but only for data from 2001 or earlier (newer data is handled by the new archive interface, which is currently not usable by this program). The program won't *get* the data for you, of course (but see "fetchsdss" for SDSS images), or even tell you very much about it -- for that, you still need to visit the individual archive web pages. But it will save you lots of clicking and typing in web-page forms if you just want to find out if there is *any* data available. An example (searching within a 2-arcminute box centered on the planetary nebula NGC 7027; searching on coordinates directly is also possible): $ telarchive "ngc 7027" 2.0 SIMBAD (Simbad 4, France): Found object coordinates: RA = 21 07 01.593, Dec = +42 14 10.18 Searching archives for ngc 7027 (RA = 21 07 01.593, dec = +42 14 10.18), with search box = 2.0 arcmin... Sloan Digital Sky Survey (DR7) Coordinate-Search Server: No data found. NOAO Science Archive: No data found. AAT Archive: No data found. ESO Archive: No data found. Spitzer Archive: Data exists! (13 records found) 1 mipssed, 2 iracmap, 3 mipsphot, 7 irsstare Multimission Archive at STScI (MAST): Data exists! (50 observations found) COPERNICUS (1); FUSE (2); GALEX (11); IUE (36) UKIRT Archive: Data exists! (943 observations found) ING Archive (old interface): Data exists! (577 observations found) 143 images, 391 spectra, 43 unclassified JKT -- RBS (1), FWHL (2), AGBX (102); INT -- WFC (9), PFCU (30), IDS (66), MES (17), FOS_1 (10); WHT -- TAURUS_2 (5), unknown (43), ISIS_BLUE_ARM (159), UES (58), ISIS_RED_ARM (75) HST Archive (at ESO): Data exists! (91 observations found) -- 13 WFPC2, 24 WF, 1 PC, 13 NICMOS, 3 FOC, 24 STIS, 13 FOS Gemini Science Archive: Data exists! (252 observations found) 162 long-slit, 45 imaging, 45 IFU michelle (9), NIRI (198), GMOS-N (45) CFHT Archive: Data exists! (213 observations found) BEAR (200), GECKO (4), AOBVIS (3), AOBIR (6) SMOKA (Subaru Mitaka Okayama Kiso Archive): Data exists! (1407 observations found) 676 images and 731 spectra Subaru -- OHS/CISCO (9), Subaru -- IRCS (160), Subaru -- COMICS (504), Kiso -- 1k CCD (3), Subaru -- HDS (14), Subaru -- OHS/CISCO (29), Subaru -- IRCS (203), Subaru -- COMICS (451), Okayama -- SNG (3), Okayama -- HIDES (31) It's available as a gzipped tar file here: http://www.mpe.mpg.de/~erwin/code/ There are installation instructions/suggestions in the README file. (And feel free to email with questions or suggestions about it!) cheers, Peter ============================================================= Peter Erwin Max-Planck-Insitute for Extraterrestrial erwin(a)mpe.mpg.de Physics, Giessenbachstrasse tel. +49 (0)89 30000 3695 85748 Garching, Germany fax +49 (0)89 30000 3495 http://www.mpe.mpg.de/~erwin

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asciitable: an extensible ASCII table reader
by Tom Aldcroft 27 মে, 2010

27 মে, 2010

I'm pleased to announce the release of version 0.2.4 of the asciitable module. Please see the project home page for download and documentation: http://cxc.harvard.edu/contrib/asciitable/ =================================== Asciitable is an extensible ASCII table reader. =================================== At the top level asciitable looks like many other ASCII table readers since it provides a default read() function with a long list of parameters to accommodate the many variations possible in commonly encountered ASCII table formats. But unlike other monolithic table reader implementations, asciitable is based on a modular and extensible class structure. Formats that cannot be handled by the existing hooks in the read() function can be accomodated by modifying the underlying class methods as needed. The asciitable can read a wide range of ASCII table formats via built-in Extension Reader Classes (derived from base class elements): * Basic: basic table with customizable delimiters and header configurations * Cds: CDS format table (also Vizier and ApJ machine readable tables) * CommentedHeader: column names given in a line that begins with the comment character * Daophot: table from the IRAF DAOphot package * Ipac: IPAC format table * NoHeader: basic table with no header where columns are auto-named * Rdb: tab-separated values with an extra line after the column definition line * Tab: tab-separated values Copyright: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (2010) Author: Tom Aldcroft (aldcroft(a)head.cfa.harvard.edu)

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numpy and the Google App Engine
by Christopher Hanley 26 মে, 2010

26 মে, 2010

Greetings, Google provides a product called App Engine. The description from their site follows, "Google App Engine enables you to build and host web apps on the same systems that power Google applications. App Engine offers fast development and deployment; simple administration, with no need to worry about hardware, patches or backups; and effortless scalability. " You can deploy applications written in either Python or JAVA. There are free and paid versions of the service. The Google App Engine would appear to be a powerful source of CPU cycles for scientific computing. Unfortunately this is currently not the case because numpy is not one of the supported libraries. The Python App Engine allows only the installation of user supplied pure Python code. I have recently returned from attending the Google I/O conference in San Francisco. While there I inquired into the possibility of getting numpy added. The basic response was that there doesn't appear to be much interest from the community given the amount of work it would take to vet and add numpy. I would like to ask your help in changing this perception. The quickest and easiest thing you can do would be to add your "me too" to this feature request (item #190) on the support site: http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=190 If this issue is important to you could also consider raising this issue in the related Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine Letting Google know how you will use numpy would be helpful. If you or your institution would be willing to pay for service if you could deploy cloud applications that required numpy would be helpful to let them know as well. Finally, if you run into any App Engine developers (Guido included) let them know that you would like to see numpy added. Thank you for your time and consideration. Chris -- Christopher Hanley Senior Systems Software Engineer Space Telescope Science Institute 3700 San Martin Drive Baltimore MD, 21218 (410) 338-4338

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PyFITS Version 2.3 Now Available
by jtaylor2＠stsci.edu 12 মে, 2010

12 মে, 2010

**************************************** PyFITS Version 2.3 NOW AVAILABLE **************************************** The Science Software Branch of the Space Telescope Science Institute wishes to announce the availability of version 2.3 of PyFITS. This is the first announced release since version 2.2 in September 2009 and contains a number of enhancements and bug fixes. Note that support for numarray has been completely eliminated in version 2.3. Notable Enhancements ==================== - Supports Python 2.6 and future division. - Supports the Python 2.5 'with' statement when opening fits files. - Provides capability to create a BinaryTableHDU directly from a numpy Record Array (array with fields). - Supports writing fits data to some file-like objects that do not support the random access methods seek() and tell(). - Supports the assignment of a row value for a table using a tuple or a list as input. Release Notes ============= Release notes for all versions of PyFITS may be found at: http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/pyfits/release Where to Obtain this Software ============================= PyFITS can be downloaded for the PyFITS download web site: http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/pyfits/Download Installation instructions are available on the web site. STSCI_PYTHON Support ==================== The upcoming release of STSCI_PYTHON v2.10 will contain PyFITS version 2.3. Array Package Support ===================== PyFITS no longer supports the NUMARRAY array package.

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NEW fits image viewer, atv clone
by nate lust 3 মে, 2010

3 মে, 2010

Hi all, Long time python user, first time poster. I work with Joe Harrington at the university of central Florida working on getting my phd in planetary science. As you may imagine I frequently have need for a FITS file viewer program. In the past I have used ds9 with the excellent RO package, thanks to Russel for that. However the need to compile and install xpa on my systems as well as a desire for a more updated graphically pleasing interface lead me to begin a project to write a viewer that ran entirely with existing python packages. Qt is the toolkit I am most familiar with so I used pyqt to implement the graphics. There was also the fact that ds9 was missing some features that I had seen in other viewers such as atv. To that end my image viewer is a clone and hybrid of both ds9 and atv, called ntv. The home page for this can be found at code.google.com/p/ntv. The most stable tarball can be found under downloads, while the whole project and be seen in the source section using svn. I strove to have feature parody with atv on the largest features, with the features most commonly used by me implemented first. The last major feature I still need to implement is blinking support, hopefully over summer while classes are on hold. It is currently good for daily tasks, image/header viewing, movie mode for 3d cubes, generating radial profile views, doing basic photometry, etc. One of the major requirements for me was to have something that could be used from the python interpreter, as I often visualize fits files and arrays in the corse of writing a pipeline. To this extent I utilized the multiprocessing package to enable interaction between the interpreter and ntv. After installing ntv one simply followes this syntax from NTV import embed win = embed.embed() win.showArray(np.arange(144).reshape(12,12)) in order to view standard numpy arrays. It is recommend that this is the first import you make in a session as sometimes packages conflict (mostly a problem on os x) I have not worked out why this is yet. information about dependencies can be found in the readme in the tarball. This has been tested on linux and os x, but i dont see why it could not work on windows machines as well. This is still a young project an as such implementing features was put at a higher priority over speed / efficiency. Contributions and or developers are VERY welcome, both in efficiency and feature wise. I tried to write this in such a way to be easily extensible, and made a great effort to comment as I went. That being said by coding style may not be immediately obvious to anyone and I would be more than happy to talk with anyone interested in helping out. I look forward to comments/criticism both positive and negative. Again the project page is at code.google.com/p/ntv Thank you Nate Lust

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Why Python for Astronomy?
by Wayne Watson 3 মে, 2010

3 মে, 2010

(This bounced with a permanent error, so I'm trying again 24 hours later.) I've been thinking of offering a 2-3 hour introductory class in Python for people interested in astronomy. To be specific, it's a large pretty serious amateur astronomy group called Society of Astronomical Science (SAS), which meets annually in Big Bear, Calif. They usually have the day prior to the conference reserved for 3-4 classes, e.g., photometry, spectroscopy, astronomy software methods, ..., etc. Of late, they have had their conference occasionaly with AAVSO, and expect that to be next year or 2012. Has the Python astronomy section, if it exists, written a short description of the usefulness of Python in astronomy? If so, I'd like to reference it in a proposal for a Python class in the next year or so at their conference. -- Wayne Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA) (121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time) Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet According to a very recent article in USA Today, 47% of households and individual do not pay federal taxes. In better times, it's about 38%. It's allowed under present laws. Google USA Today "when 47% don't" Web Page:<www.speckledwithstars.net/>

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