[AstroPy] AstroPy CfA workshop summary

[Kelle Cruz]

I'm so happy this meeting happened! Did ya'll talk about when the next one
will be? or the necessary frequency of them?

Also, I think that the larger astro community should be informed of these
efforts and progress. Could someone generate an update from the meeting
that's readable by a more general audience. It can be posted to Astropython,
Tom (or I) can post it to AstroBetter...it can also be posted to the
Astronomers FB group, and maybe even go out as an announcement in the AAS
Newsletter.

We want the community to know that there is coordinated effort going into
Python to further facilitate the transition from IDL/IRAF.

kelle

On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Thomas Robitaille <
thomas.robitaille at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> The first AstroPy development coordination meeting took place last
> week at the CfA in Cambridge, MA, and was attended by 20 participants
> (16 local and 4 remote). We made significant progress on all fronts. A
> detailed agenda and minutes are available here:
>
> https://github.com/astropy/astropy/wiki/CfAMeeting2011Agenda
> https://github.com/astropy/astropy/wiki/CfAMeeting2011Minutes
>
> so if you are interested in all the decisions that were made, and the
> motivation behind these, I encourage you to read through these!
>
> Below I summarize some of the main decisions:
>
> * Discussions relating to development of the AstroPy package will now
> take place on the astropy-dev at googlegroups.com mailing list. If you
> are interesting in the astropy development, please sign up for this
> mailing list, either at:
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/astropy-dev
>
> or by sending an empty email to:
>
> astropy-dev+subscribe at googlegroups.com
>
> You can use the web interface to catch up with any discussions you
> might have missed.
>
> * We decided on initial areas of development. These areas are listed
> below, along with names in square brackets which indicate participants
> who volunteered to (at least temporarily) coordinate efforts in these
> areas in the short term. The aim was to guarantee that leaving the
> workshop, we had at least one person who is happy to coordinate
> getting things started.
>
> - astropy.constants (with cgs and si sub-modules) [Erik Tollerud,
> Thomas Robitaille]
> - astropy.units - unit conversion routines [Perry Greenfield]
> - astropy.io.fits - FITS file I/O [Erik Bray]
> - astropy.io.vo - VO tables and communication (both technically I/O)
> [Mike Droettboom]
> - astropy.table - a base class for tables (and registry facility for
> read/write functions) [Tom Aldcroft and Thomas Robitaille]
> - astropy.wcs - WCS transformations [Mike Droettboom and Nadia Dencheva]
> - astropy.coords - coordinate transformations (ultimately including
> Alt/Az type conversions that depend on time) [Erik Tollerud]
> - astropy.time - handling of astronomical times (e.g. julian dates,
> etc.) [Wolfgang K. and Erik Tollerud]
> - astropy.nddata - arbitrary n-dimensional datasets with WCS [Steve
> Crawford]
> - astropy.image - image-specific routines [Thomas Robitaille]
> - astropy.spectrum - spectrum-specific routines [Wolfgang Kerzendorf,
> Erik Tollerud, Adam Ginsburg]
>
> The coordinators will get in touch with people listed on
>
> https://github.com/astropy/astropy/wiki/Developers
>
> to coordinate things. You are also free to contact these people
> directly to let them know of your interests in contributing.
>
> * AstroPy will be released under a 3-clause BSD license
> (https://github.com/astropy/astropy/blob/master/licenses/LICENSE.rst)
>
> * The py.test testing framework will be used for developing tests
> (instructions and guidelines for testing will be uploaded to the
> http://www.astropy.org website shortly).
>
> * The main aspects of the core package layout were finalized.
>
> * API decisions regarding low-level data objects (NDData,
> Spectral/Spectrum1D/Spectrum2D, Image, etc.) were made (details
> available in the minutes).
>
> * We plan to hold a logo/website design competition, and will send
> details out to this mailing list shortly!
>
> Additionally, we held a coding sprint on Friday, and made significant
> progress in certain areas. You can follow the progress at
> https://github.com/astropy/astropy.
>
> Please do not hesitate if you would like clarifications or have any
> questions!
>
> Thomas
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>



-- 
Kelle Cruz, PhD — http://kellecruz.com/
917.725.1334 — Hunter ext: 16486 — AMNH ext: 3404
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