[AstroPy] ANN: astropy-healpix v0.1, a new BSD-licensed HEALPix Python package

[Thomas Robitaille]

Hi everyone,

We are happy to announce the first release of a new package:

astropy-healpix - A BSD-licensed Astropy-compatible HEALPix implementation

* Docs: http://astropy-healpix.readthedocs.io
* Code: https://github.com/astropy/astropy-healpix
* PyPI: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/astropy-healpix

This new package uses C HEALPix code originally developed by Dustin
Lang as part of astrometry.net (developed based on the HEALPix
papers), and provides a high-level Pythonic API using Astropy objects
(including e.g. astropy.coordinates objects). At this time the package
should still be considered experimental and we may still change the
API in future depending on feedback on this first release.

The main motivations for developing this package (which is independent
from the GPL-licensed HEALPix and healpy packages) are to provide a
BSD-licensed HEALPix implementation that can be used in packages in
the Astropy ecosystem such as the BSD-licensed reproject, hips, and
regions packages without worrying about potential licensing issues,
and to have a lightweight and portable implementation that works on
all major platforms (Linux, MacOS X, and Windows).

To try it out, you can easily install it with pip:

   pip install astropy-healpix

Or with conda:

   conda install -c conda-forge astropy-healpix

and take a look at the documentation to get started on using it:

http://astropy-healpix.readthedocs.io

Please do report any issues, feature requests, or suggestions for
improvements in the issue tracker for the repository:
https://github.com/astropy/astropy-healpix/issues

We would also be really interested in hearing from you if you would
like to help out with the development/maintenance of the package - the
Python part of the package is very approachable and there are a number
of low-hanging issues to solve.

Cheers,

Tom and Christoph