integration with astropy?

[Samuel Harrold]

Hello,

Are there plans to integrate services by astrometry.net with the astropy collaboration by making an astropy affiliated package? (http://www.astropy.org/) I see that the VAO is making cone-search services available from astropy (http://docs.astropy.org/en/latest/vo/validator.html), and there's also the astroquery package under development (http://www.astropy.org/affiliated/).

An astropy package that interfaces with astrometry.net services would be extremely useful. What do others think?

Thanks,

Sam Harrold

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Samuel Harrold

PhD candidate

Astronomy Department

University of Texas at Austin

[Dustin Lang]

I don't have any plans to do that.  What functionality would you put in astropy?  The web service API client?  Since that is entirely contain in two pure-python files, it doesn't seem worth it.  But it's GPL, so there's nothing stopping someone else from doing it.

--dustin

[Samuel Harrold]

Thanks Dustin for your response. Here are a few benefits to integrating with astropy:

- By being part of the astropy collaboration, astrometry.net will get more users.

- Users will only need to install astropy to also have access to the astrometry.net client. This minimizes effort required of users.

- Because astropy emphasizes documentation, users will also have access to astrometry.net documentation from the same location as their other astropy subpackages.

Thanks for entertaining the possibility of integrating with astropy. I'll let you know if I pursue writing the astropy subpackage for astrometry.net. Astrometry.net has been very helpful for my research. Thanks for such a useful tool!