Practical Python for Astronomers¶

Practical Python for Astronomers is a series of hands-on workshops to explore the Python language and the powerful analysis tools it provides. The emphasis is on using Python to solve real-world problems that astronomers are likely to encounter in research.

The workshops immediately make use of the full suite of plotting, analysis, and file reading tools.

Along the way elements of the Python language such as data types, control structures, functions, and objects are introduced.

This is an interactive experience using tutorial examples run by participants on their laptops.

Workshop topics

Archival topic

The following topic is based on packages that are not being actively developed and have been superceded. However there are still useful concepts presented here and we keep it for reference.

Sample Workshop Schedule¶ The workshop schedule is as follows. Except for the first introductory session all workshops are hands-on and participants should bring a laptop. Date Topic Location and time Presenter TBD Introduction to Python for Astronomers TBD TBD TBD Installation and Understanding Packages TDB TBD TBD Core packages - NumPy, iPython, SciPy TBD TBD TBD Plotting and Images TBD TBD TBD Reading and Writing Files TBD TBD TBD Fitting and Modeling 1-d and 2-d data TBD TBD TBD VO and Online astronomy TBD TBD

About the Workshops¶ The content presented here is suitable for self-study by those wishing to learn Python for astronomy or other scientific research applications. A greater goal is for those knowledgable in Python to teach the workshop series at their local institutions, adapting the content as desired. To that end we have developed the content in Sphinx RestructuredText and hosted the source on github at https://github.com/python4astronomers/. Anyone interested can clone the repository or download a tarball and make modifications needed to present the material locally. We would also welcome comments, fixes, or suggestions for improvement. This can be done as a Github issue or pull request, or by sending email to aldcroft@head.cfa.harvard.edu. The workshop material here was presented in the Spring of 2011 at the Harvard / Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. A range of about 25 to 50 people participated in the different workshops, which were 1.5 hours in duration. Based on our experience a 2 hour slot would have been more reasonable to allow time for the exercises and discussion.

About the Format¶ The workshop presentations are formatted as Sphinx web documents instead of the more traditional slide presentation. This was a natural choice for the authors who all use Sphinx for Python documenation. Further inspiration was drawn from Dumping PowerPoint in Favor of Web Sites. This site highlights by discussion and examples the advantages in using a web-based study guide. In particular we found the non-linear format (e.g. jumping to different sections or web sites) and ability to show longer examples were quite valuable. Having full prose text results in a document which is far more useful as a standalone study guide than presentation slides. Ironically it also reduces the temptation to read from the screen.