Python and the Sun

Transforming Space Science through Open-Source

whoami

• Final-Year Undergrad, JIIT Noida
• GSoC '23 Student @ OpenAstronomy
• Helping maintain SunPy
• Volunteer @ OSDC, FOSS United, and here!
• Interested in Python, Scientific Software, Data and the Cloud

an outline

• Python in Science, Astronomy
• Python and Solar Physics, SunPy
• Open-Science

Scientific Python

Python 🤝  Scientific Communities!

• Accessible
• Flexible
• Open-Source
• Actively Developed
• Strong Community Support

Many Reasons Why

Python in Astronomy

• Rapid adoption in the astronomy community
• Advantages: ease of use, extensive libraries, strong community support
• Shift from proprietary software to open-source solutions

The Astro-Python Ecosystem

• AstroPy: Core package for astronomy
• Astroquery: Accessing astronomical data from online sources
• Stingray: Time series analysis and spectral-timing software
• SunPy: Heliophysics / Solar Data Analysis
• ...many more!

Open Science

• the movement to make scientific research and its results accessible to all levels of society.
• transparency, reproducibility, collaboration.

The Sun

Why study the Sun?

But the Sun is also a stormy place...

SDO/AIA

In a sky full of stars...

SDO/AIA

SDO/AIA

Coronal Mass Ejections

SolarSoft

•  
• Lots of pain-points: proprietary and closed development environment, difficult to get involved, lack of versioning, etc.

The SunPy Project

A community of scientists and software developers creating an ecosystem of Python packages for solar physics.

The SunPy core Package

Solar data analysis. This involves:

• access data from different providers
• read image and time series data
• visualise, plot solar data
• transform between commonly used coordinate systems
• ...

Objective

To develop and facilitate a high-quality, easy-to-use, community-led, FOSS solar data analysis ecosystem based on the scientific Python environment.

SunPy Affiliate Projects

• Sunkit-image: Advanced image processing for solar data
• NDCube: Multi-dimensional data structures for scientific data
• drms: Access to Stanford's Joint Science Operations Center data
• ... many more

SunPy's Impact

• Used in numerous scientific publications
• Supports various solar missions and ground-based observatories
• Enables efficient data analysis and visualization for researchers worldwide

A quick tour!

• Units
• Times
• Coordinates
• Maps
• Timeseries

Times and TimeRanges

Getting Involved

• Use it!
• File bug reports
• Contribute documentation
• Contribute code
• The Matrix chat: #sunpy:openastronomy.org
• Weekly community calls

The FAIR Principles

• Findable
• Accessible
• Interoperable
• Reproducible

Open Science Practices

• Open access
• Open data
• Open source

OSS in Open Science

• Enabling reproducible research
• Accelerating scientific progress through shared tools
• Democratized access to advanced analytical capabilities

Many Initiatives that help further this goal

Challenges in Open Science

• Balancing openness with data protection and proprietary periods
• Ensuring long-term sustainability of open-source projects
• Promoting open science practices in education and professional development

Relevant Links

• https://github.com/sunpy/
• https://docs.sunpy.org/
• https://nasa.github.io/Transform-to-Open-Science/
• https://openastronomy.org/
• https://pyopensci.org/

Thanks!

in/akshit-tyagi42

exitflynn

these slides ^

flynnzler

@exitflynn@fosstodon.org