[Numpy-discussion] [AstroPy] Porting "IDL Astronomy User's Library" to numpy

[Perry Greenfield]

On Jul 16, 2007, at 9:13 AM, Yannick Copin wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'd be interested in some astronomical utilities from the IDL  
> Astronomy User's
> Library (http://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov/contents.html) converted to
> python/numpy. I had a look to idl2python
> (http://software.pseudogreen.org/i2py/), but the automatic  
> translation fails,
> mostly because (I think) the conversion is Numeric-oriented, and  
> because of
> the intrinsic differences in the function argument management  
> between IDL and
> python.
>
> So, before pursuing in this direction, I'd like to know if this  
> exercice has
> already been done, at least partially.
>
We have the idea of doing it, but not in a very literal sense  
(translating idl routines to Python counterparts). There has been  
some work in this area on our part, but because of budget pressures,  
much less over the last 2 years than hoped (things are looking better  
now, but it may be some months before activity picks up on this front  
again).

Work so far on our part has centered on:

Coordinate transformation utilities
Synthetic photometry

So if you are interested in doing more literal translations, please  
feel free to go right ahead. There is even a place to put such stuff:  
http://www.scipy.org/AstroLib

Perry