Astro-Py list

[Nicolas Devillard]

Hello Andrew:

>  At one time I did start to make a module for the base routines in
> Nicholas's eclipse library (see 'Fast FITS queries in Python'), but
> it's only 20% completed. So little time, so many project managers ;-)

One word about eclipse and Python:

eclipse is about to be completely Python-ized to offer a Python
programming interface to its C library. Once this is achieved, it
should help us build the automatic data reduction tools we need for
some of the VLT instruments in a pretty short development time.

For the moment, the base C code in eclipse is under heavy rain: we modify
it almost every day to suit our needs, it is definitely not recommended to
base any high-level code upon this for the moment. As soon as we have
Python-ized the lot, the low-level stuff may still change at high rate,
but the Python interfaces should at least remain stable.

Our aim is not to build an IRAF-like interactive facility for data
reduction (e.g. there is no display facility of any kind). The aim is to
have a fast and robust image processing library in C, programmed at a
higher level in Python for fast algorithm and code development, ease of
use, maintenance and portability reasons.

... and also because we love Python. :-)

Stay tuned!
-- 
Nicolas