From William.T.Bridgman.1 at gsfc.nasa.gov  Tue Feb  3 08:53:28 2004
From: William.T.Bridgman.1 at gsfc.nasa.gov (W.T. Bridgman)
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 08:53:28 -0500
Subject: [AstroPy] Testing the AstroPy list
Message-ID: <583DDC7E-5650-11D8-B3D6-0030657B87AC@gsfc.nasa.gov>

<x-flowed>Due to an inquiry, I thought I'd check to see if this list is still 
functional.

Anyone know of the status of it being maintained at STSci?

Tom
--
Dr. William T."Tom" Bridgman               Scientific Visualization 
Studio
Global Science & Technology, Inc.          NASA/Goddard Space Flight 
Center
Email: William.T.Bridgman.1 at gsfc.nasa.gov  Code 935
Phone: 301-286-1346                        Greenbelt, MD 20771
FAX:   TBD                                 http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/

_____________________________________________________
AstroPy mailing list  -  astropy at stsci.edu
http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/~bridgman/AstroPy/
</x-flowed>

From perry at stsci.edu  Tue Feb  3 13:29:40 2004
From: perry at stsci.edu (Perry Greenfield)
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 13:29:40 -0500
Subject: [AstroPy] STScI update
In-Reply-To: <583DDC7E-5650-11D8-B3D6-0030657B87AC@gsfc.nasa.gov>
Message-ID: <EE00789A-5676-11D8-8A5B-000393989D66@stsci.edu>

<x-flowed>Tom Bridgeman's post reminded us that we need to do something about the
AstroPy web page. We will look into moving to an STScI server soon.

I thought I would take this an opportunity to say a little about our
plans.

Right now plotting is our biggest concern. We had staked our plans on
Chaco, but in trying to work with it, we decided it was to complicated
to build on. We then began designing a new plotting package when some
suggested we take a look at matplotlib. That package looks very 
promising
to us and that is what we are now planning to build on. It isn't clear
how soon we will have something available for that. There are a number
of issues related to our use of it, some of which may or may not be
issues with others, namely:

1) it must have a Tkinter-based backend available so that it can be
    used with PyRAF.
2) it must be usable with numarray
3) relatively easily distributable.
4) IDL-style plotting functions (matplotlib is very matlab-based; we 
plan on
    providing more IDL-like functions)
5) image support (it has some psuedo-image support now, but not what we 
really
    need.

We are hoping that we can accomplish 1-3 within a few weeks. At that 
point we
make our changes available (either as part of matplotlib or layered on 
it).
There are many other extensions we hope to make to it. Some may find it 
useful
currently if the Tkinter or numarray requirements are not needed.

Up to now our efforts have been focused primarily on numarray and 
PyFITS (and
plotting, but with no visible product yet). In the coming year our 
attention
will quickly move towards making more libraries available for numarray 
so
you should see many more announcements regarding these in the next 12 
months.

Perry Greenfield

_____________________________________________________
AstroPy mailing list  -  astropy at stsci.edu
http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/~bridgman/AstroPy/
</x-flowed>

From perry at stsci.edu  Tue Feb  3 14:58:11 2004
From: perry at stsci.edu (Perry Greenfield)
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 14:58:11 -0500
Subject: [AstroPy] STScI update
In-Reply-To: <401FF5C8.5050507@pha.jhu.edu>
Message-ID: <4B83E91D-5683-11D8-8A5B-000393989D66@stsci.edu>

<x-flowed>>
> Hi,
>
> Have you considered changing GUI toolkits?  Tk and it's lame brother 
> tcl are starting to show their age.  With all the work done on many 
> desktop platforms to produce a unified visual appearance Tk widgets 
> stick out like a sore thumb.  And then there is the fact that python, 
> in the spirit of simplicity and elegance, would benefit from removing 
> dependencies on that other scripting language.  System administrators 
> and installers everywhere will cheer.
>
> PyGTK <http://www.daa.com.au/~james/software/pygtk/> is quite 
> excellent but requires GTK.  GTK is available for OS X and Win32 but 
> is not commonly used.
>
> Something like wxPython <http://www.wxpython.org/> is cross platform 
> and uses the platform native toolkit (and toolkit themes).  GTK2 on 
> unix. Apple ships a version of this with OS X 10.3.  wxPython also has 
> a wxGLCanvas object that may be useful.
>
> Cheers,
> Jon

We are open to other toolkits, but the features of the toolkit aren't 
really
the biggest driver in our decision. The ease of installation is our 
biggest
concern. For example, wxWindows is considered by many to be much nicer 
(and
certainly more modern) than Tkinter, but can be a bear to install on 
Solaris
(more accurately, the problem is with the required packages, e.g, gtk). 
Likewise,
OpenGL has wonderful features but has entailed many installation 
hassles. That's
why we've moved away from it in the latest version of PyRAF.

These issues may go away if Solaris dies as a platform, but currently, 
it's one
we need to support.

There is one other aspect of Tkinter that makes it unusual. It, unlike 
any other
gui toolkit, doesn't require using mainloop while working from a 
terminal window
(apparently the python interpreter loop somehow does what mainloop 
does). This
is a handy aspect of Tkinter that makes it usable for the command line. 
Otherwise
you either force use of a threaded solution (which entails its own 
problems) or
force users to use a gui-based shell window for their commands. 
wxPython is
very easy to crash from the interactive prompt, by the way (you can 
segfault
or hang the python process) which is another reason we are 
uncomfortable using it.

If using graphics from a terminal were the only reason, it probably 
would not
prevent us from switching to another toolkit. The primary reason is 
installation.

Perry Greenfield

_____________________________________________________
AstroPy mailing list  -  astropy at stsci.edu
http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/~bridgman/AstroPy/
</x-flowed>

From rlw at stsci.edu  Tue Feb  3 15:38:45 2004
From: rlw at stsci.edu (Rick White)
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 15:38:45 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [AstroPy] STScI update
In-Reply-To: <401FF5C8.5050507@pha.jhu.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0402031530180.16465-100000@sundog.stsci.edu>

Hi Jon,

On Tue, 3 Feb 2004, William Jon McCann wrote:

> Have you considered changing GUI toolkits?

It might also be worth mentioning that matplotlib, which we are
planning to use as the basis of our future plotting tools, supports
multiple back-ends and already has a GTK2 interface.  If we switch the
PyRAF graphics over to matplotlib (and I assume that's the plan, even
though I haven't talked with Perry about it!) then it would become easy
to have multiple backends for the graphics.

It would be harder to write a new version of epar using pygtk, but that
is certainly possible in principle.  Then we could have a system that
worked with either backend.

If Python were to starting coming with one of these other GUI toolkits
out of the box, I imagine that would increase our enthusiasm for moving
away from Tk.  As Perry said, by far the biggest reasons for sticking
with Tkinter are that it comes built-in to Python and that the Python
interpreter automatically runs the Tk mainloop while waiting at the
interactive prompt.
				Rick

_____________________________________________________
AstroPy mailing list  -  astropy at stsci.edu
http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/~bridgman/AstroPy/

From loredo at astro.cornell.edu  Tue Feb  3 17:09:34 2004
From: loredo at astro.cornell.edu (Tom Loredo)
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 17:09:34 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [AstroPy] Python spectral fitting package - ala Sherpa
Message-ID: <200402032209.i13M9YQ08566@laplace.astro.cornell.edu>


Hi Paul-

I'm sorry to have delayed response to your question about this back in
November.  I hoped to have a test version of the PIE available around
the New Year, but I'm still stuck on some of the "big picture" aspects
of it.  Lots of little pieces of the package exist, but I haven't
wanted to release them until I settled on the interface.  Part of
the problem is that I've spent so much time trying to find funding
for the future that I've had less time to spend on my few actually
funded projects than I hoped.  But the real problem is that every
design I've come up has so far been okay for one set of problems but
clumsy for others.  I've nearly reached the end of my creativity
on it, so if I haven't converged on it within a couple weeks, I will
just dump what I have on you and Alanna and Travis and beg for
help.  My problem may be that I want it to be too general; I may
have to settle for a handful of specific solutions instead of one
general framework.

Regarding AISR, I wasn't planning on submitting anything this year.
If the Inference package goes well, I hope to submit something asking
for a reduced amount to maintain and expand it next year.  But if
there is something specific you were thinking of proposing that you
think I could contribute to, do let me know.

The NSF has a new program targeting statistical and mathematical
research in astronomy.  If the kind of projects you were thinking
of have a strong statistical focus, I can give you the NSF URL
for this.  Here at Cornell we're putting together a time series
proposal for it.

-Tom
 
_____________________________________________________
AstroPy mailing list  -  astropy at stsci.edu
http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/~bridgman/AstroPy/

From barrett at stsci.edu  Wed Feb  4 09:39:54 2004
From: barrett at stsci.edu (Paul Barrett)
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 09:39:54 -0500
Subject: [AstroPy] Python spectral fitting package - ala Sherpa
In-Reply-To: <200402032209.i13M9YQ08566@laplace.astro.cornell.edu>
References: <200402032209.i13M9YQ08566@laplace.astro.cornell.edu>
Message-ID: <4021043A.8010700@stsci.edu>

<x-flowed>Tom Loredo wrote:
> Hi Paul-
> 
> I'm sorry to have delayed response to your question about this back in
> November.  I hoped to have a test version of the PIE available around
> the New Year, but I'm still stuck on some of the "big picture" aspects
> of it.  Lots of little pieces of the package exist, but I haven't
> wanted to release them until I settled on the interface.  Part of
> the problem is that I've spent so much time trying to find funding
> for the future that I've had less time to spend on my few actually
> funded projects than I hoped.  But the real problem is that every
> design I've come up has so far been okay for one set of problems but
> clumsy for others.  I've nearly reached the end of my creativity
> on it, so if I haven't converged on it within a couple weeks, I will
> just dump what I have on you and Alanna and Travis and beg for
> help.  My problem may be that I want it to be too general; I may
> have to settle for a handful of specific solutions instead of one
> general framework.

Maybe you should let us take a look at it now.  Sometimes just 
presenting a subject can lead to a solution.

> Regarding AISR, I wasn't planning on submitting anything this year.
> If the Inference package goes well, I hope to submit something asking
> for a reduced amount to maintain and expand it next year.  But if
> there is something specific you were thinking of proposing that you
> think I could contribute to, do let me know.

I still think there is a great need for an enhanced spectral fitting 
package ala XSPEC and Sherpa.  The problems that I see with these two 
packages are:

1. they are not object oriented,

2. their spectral model is flawed (i.e. multiplicative and additive
    models are a needless constraint),

3. they only handle 1 dimensional response matrices (see e.g. FUSE,
    which could use a 2D response matrix), and

4. they are primarily implemented using compiled languages, so
    development is slow.  (Sherpa's implementation is simply
    bass-ackwards, i.e. imbeding an interpreted language in a compiled
    language.  In addition, Numeric/numarray syntax is more powerful than
    SLANG and hence, numerically more efficient.)

If PIE can solve these problems, then I'm willing to wait, otherwise it 
would be nice to get started on the successor to XSPEC and Sherpa.

> The NSF has a new program targeting statistical and mathematical
> research in astronomy.  If the kind of projects you were thinking
> of have a strong statistical focus, I can give you the NSF URL
> for this.  Here at Cornell we're putting together a time series
> proposal for it.

Yes, I'm aware of this program.

Cheers,
Paul

-- 
Paul Barrett, PhD      Space Telescope Science Institute
Phone: 410-338-4475    ESS/Science Software Branch
FAX:   410-338-4767    Baltimore, MD 21218

_____________________________________________________
AstroPy mailing list  -  astropy at stsci.edu
http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/~bridgman/AstroPy/
</x-flowed>

From ptak at pha.jhu.edu  Wed Feb  4 11:00:24 2004
From: ptak at pha.jhu.edu (Andrew Ptak)
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 11:00:24 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [AstroPy] Python spectral fitting package - ala Sherpa
In-Reply-To: <4021043A.8010700@stsci.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0402041046560.15118-100000@skysrv.pha.jhu.edu>

Hello,

Sorry if this is getting a bit off-topic, but concerning these two, first 
the latest verison of XSPEC is object-oriented (written in C++) but hasn't 
been released yet.  This opens the possibility a little more of wrapping 
higher-level objects in python.  Second, I have a program that does 2-d 
fitting on images using Numeric (see http://xassist.pha.jhu.edu/ximgfit).  
It works fine for my purposes however I suspect it is a bit inefficient at 
the moment due to the creation of temporaries.  For example, since 
everything is in python the models are simply .py files (this of course 
was one of the design goals, to allow models to be added without 
recompiling).  Here is the code for computing a 2-d Gaussian model: 
     def Eval(self, x, y):
        xc = self.params[0].value
        yc = self.params[1].value
        norm = self.params[2].value
        sigmax = self.params[3].value
        sigmay = self.params[4].value
        theta = self.params[5].value
        cost = cos(theta/radeg)
        sint = sin(theta/radeg)
        dx = x-xc
        dy = y-yc
        rx = dx*cost + dy*sint
        ry = -dx*sint + dy*cost
        z2 = rx*rx/(sigmax*sigmax)+ry*ry/(sigmay*sigmay)
        # Avoid overflow errors
        z2 = self.min(z2, 100.)
        result = norm*exp(-z2/2)
        return(result)

In this design, x and y are 2-D arrays.  If I am not mistaken, in the line 
with z2 = rx* ... 7 temporaries are created.  From what I have heard 
weave.blitz() may be a solution but I haven't had a chance to play with 
that.  But my main point is that in general it may be tricky to be as 
efficient as the case where most of the computation is done at the C/C++ 
level since the programmer will have some insight, and with scripting 
languages only being used for the UI.

Andy Ptak

On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, Paul Barrett wrote:

> 
> 3. they only handle 1 dimensional response matrices (see e.g. FUSE,
>     which could use a 2D response matrix), and
> 
> 4. they are primarily implemented using compiled languages, so
>     development is slow.  (Sherpa's implementation is simply
>     bass-ackwards, i.e. imbeding an interpreted language in a compiled
>     language.  In addition, Numeric/numarray syntax is more powerful than
>     SLANG and hence, numerically more efficient.)
> 

_____________________________________________________
AstroPy mailing list  -  astropy at stsci.edu
http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/~bridgman/AstroPy/

From barrett at stsci.edu  Thu Feb 12 09:56:28 2004
From: barrett at stsci.edu (Paul Barrett)
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 09:56:28 -0500
Subject: [AstroPy] New version of numarray manual
Message-ID: <402B941C.5050200@stsci.edu>

<x-flowed>
There's a new version of the numarray manual for 0.8 at Source Forge.

See

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1369&package_id=32367&release_id=203420

-- 
Paul Barrett, PhD      Space Telescope Science Institute
Phone: 410-338-4475    ESS/Science Software Branch
FAX:   410-338-4767    Baltimore, MD 21218

_____________________________________________________
AstroPy mailing list  -  astropy at stsci.edu
http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/~bridgman/AstroPy/
</x-flowed>

From owen at astro.washington.edu  Tue Feb 24 13:01:12 2004
From: owen at astro.washington.edu (Russell E Owen)
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 10:01:12 -0800
Subject: AstroPy web page
Message-ID: <p06020402bc613f67c951@[128.95.99.44]>

<x-flowed>I recently sent some updates to Dr. Bridgman of the AstroPy web page 
and he said he no longer had time to maintain it. I offered to take 
over maintenance and Dr. Bridgman sounded interested.

Since then, apparently the topic has been discussed on this mailing 
list (I just subscribed yesterday and so missed the discussion), so 
I'm not sure where it stands. From my perspective:

- I put up a new version of the page at 
<http://www.astro.washington.edu/owen/AstroPy.html>. The links have 
been updated and I also rewrote some of the text.
- If anybody on the list wants to take the AstroPy page over, feel 
free. I just want to see it maintained by somebody! (And feel free to 
incorporate or ignore any of my changes). I'm happy to do it or pass 
it off to somebody else. I'm on soft money, so if somebody with a 
more stable job wants it, that might make more sense.

Regards,

-- Russell

P.S. My background is in programming telescope control systems and 
such. I wrote the TCC for the Apache Point telescopes (3.5m and 
SDSS). Presently I am using Python/Tkinter to write a new GUI for the 
APO 3.5m telescope.

I don't personally do much image processing, though I am trying to 
convert a nice new centroiding algorithm developed by Jim Gunn from C 
(and specialized for a particular application -- the SDSS guider) 
into Python (and generalizing the code). Getting acceptable 
performance is the big hurdle.
-- 
Russell E. Owen
owen at astro.washington.edu               University of Washington
phone: 206-543-2859                     Astronomy
fax:   206-543-9850                     Box 351580
                                         C321 Physics/Astronomy Bldg (non USPS)
<http://www.astro.washington.edu/owen/>	Seattle, WA 98195-1580
</x-flowed>

From owen at astro.washington.edu  Tue Feb 24 19:16:12 2004
From: owen at astro.washington.edu (Russell E Owen)
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 16:16:12 -0800
Subject: AstroPy web page
Message-ID: <p06020414bc61993dd79e@[128.95.99.44]>

<x-flowed>OK, it's official. The AstroPy page has formally moved to 
<http://www.astro.washington.edu/owen/AstroPy.html> (though the old 
page may yet be up for awhile) and I am maintaining it. Feel free to 
send me updates.

Regards,

-- Russell

</x-flowed>

From shashi at prl.ernet.in  Tue Feb 24 23:36:33 2004
From: shashi at prl.ernet.in (Shashikiran Ganesh)
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 10:06:33 +0530 (IST)
Subject: AstroPy web page
In-Reply-To: <p06020414bc61993dd79e@[128.95.99.44]>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0402250955500.2224-100000@castor.prl.ernet.in>

Hi,

Maybe a good idea to have a mirror site at an open source portal such as
http://sarovar.org  I already have two projects related to astronomy on
this portal :  http://sofa.sarovar.org and http://stv.sarovar.org

The first one is a collection of weblinks called "Standard Objects for
Astronomy" and the second one is a set of pages devoted to my linux based
program to control the SBIG STV autoguider.

Primarily Sarovar hosts a lot of TeX related projects - including the
PSTricks Tutorial from the Indian TeX Users Group.

I propose that we could have a site called 'astropy.sarovar.org' with a
couple of members having access to update the site remotely.  If it seems
that the sarovar web is accessible easily worldwide, then I shall register
a new project there for AstroPy.  Please let me know,

Regards,
Shashi



On Tue, 24 Feb 2004, Russell E Owen wrote:

> Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 16:16:12 -0800
> From: Russell E Owen <owen at astro.washington.edu>
> To: astropy-list at stsci.edu
> Subject: AstroPy web page
>
> OK, it's official. The AstroPy page has formally moved to
> <http://www.astro.washington.edu/owen/AstroPy.html> (though the old
> page may yet be up for awhile) and I am maintaining it. Feel free to
> send me updates.
>
> Regards,
>
> -- Russell
>

-- 
2004-02-25 at 9:55am IST
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shashikiran Ganesh                  |  shashi at prl.res.in
Physical Research Laboratory        |
Astronomy and Astrophysics Division |  http://www.prl.res.in/~shashi
Ahmedabad 380 009, India            |  http://www.iap.fr/users/shashi
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


From rays at blue-cove.com  Wed Feb 25 02:03:04 2004
From: rays at blue-cove.com (RayS)
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 23:03:04 -0800
Subject: [AstroPy] Re: Welcome to astropy
Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20040224225823.04300940@216.122.242.54>

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