Astronomical Python : an introduction to modern scientific programming / Imad Pasha.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pasha, Imad, author.

Contributor:

Institute of Physics (Great Britain), publisher.

Series:

IOP (Series). Release 23.

AAS-IOP astronomy. 2023 collection.

[IOP release $release]

AAS-IOP astronomy. [2023 collection], 2514-3433

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Astronomy--Data processing.

Astronomy.

Statistical astronomy.

Python (Computer program language).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (various pagings) : illustrations (some color).

Place of Publication:

Bristol [England] (Temple Circus, Temple Way, Bristol BS1 6HG, UK) : IOP Publishing, [2024]

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader, EPUB reader, or Kindle reader.

Biography/History:

Imad Pasha is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and PhD candidate at Yale University. Before Yale, he earned Bachelors degrees in Physics and Astrophysics from University of California, Berkeley, as well as a minor in Creative Writing. He worked as a reporter, senior editor, and photographer at The Daily Californian, the newspaper of record in Berkeley, CA. At Yale, his research has focused broadly on the processes driving galaxy evolution. He is interested in particular in how gas is accreted onto galaxies from the cosmic web, processed into stars, and (partially) expelled back out into the intergalactic medium, to be potentially later re-accreted.

Summary:

Over the past two decades, Python has become the de facto standard language of data science both in industry and astronomy (with the exception of simulations and other extreme scale computing problems). This course text is a full introduction to programming in Python with an explicit focus on astrophysical applications. The book covers the fundamentals of Python, including the native data types and operations, and how the language, interpreter, and operating system work together. Leaning heavily on standard packages used in astronomy, the book covers the installation and basic structure of the language and libraries; script writing, conditional statements, loops, and other code structures that allow for complex outcome management; the creation and use of functions and classes within Python; the creation of packages and the methods for re-using, importing, and otherwise standardizing code; and plotting. Finally, the book contains several higher level chapters that carry students from the beginner stage of programming into the intermediate.

Contents:

1. Introduction

1.1. How to use this book?

1.2. Data availability

part I. Unix and basic Python. 2. Essential Unix skills

2.1. Operating systems

2.2. Anatomy of the terminal

2.3. Common UNIX commands

2.4. Cancelling commands

2.5. Tab complete

2.6. Intermediate shell commands

2.7. SSH and servers

2.8. Profiles

2.9. Summary

3. Installing Python and the astronomy stack

3.1. Prerequisites

3.2. Python environments

3.3. Editors

3.4. Summary

4. Introduction to Python

4.1. Variables

4.2. Importing external libraries

4.3. Comments

4.4. Data types

4.5. Indexing

4.6. Slicing

4.7. Operations

4.8. Reserved words

4.9. Filtering and masking

4.10. Conditional statements

4.11. Loops and iterators

4.12. Cancelling code execution

4.13. Shell and shell-like commands in Python

4.14. Interpreting error messages

4.15. Handling exceptions

4.16. Summary

part II. Core research libraries. 5. Visualization with Matplotlib

5.1. Introduction

5.2. A simple plot

5.3. Figures and axes

5.4. Subplots

5.5. Adjusting marker properties

5.6. Adjusting ticks

5.7. Adjusting fonts and fontsizes

5.8. Multiple subplots

5.9. Subplot mosaic

5.10. Research example : displaying a best fit

5.11. Errorbars

5.12. Plotting n-dimensional data

5.13. Colorbars

5.14. Summary

6. Numpy

6.1. Introduction

6.2. The array

6.3. Precision

6.4. Key library functions

6.5. Research example : an exoplanet transit

6.6. Summary

7. SciPy

7.1. Introduction

7.2. Numerical integration

7.3. Optimization

7.4. Statistics

7.5. Summary

8. Astropy and associated packages

8.1. Introduction

8.2. Units and constants

8.3. Cosmological calculations

8.4. Coordinates

8.5. Astroquery

8.6. Research example : automatic offsets

8.7. Research example : handling astronomical images

8.8. Summary

part III. Intermediate applications and patterns. 9. Functions and functional programming

9.1. Introduction

9.2. Defining functions

9.3. Writing documentation

9.4. Checking function inputs

9.5. Local scope and global scope

9.6. Chaining functions together

9.7. The concept of main()

9.8. Keyword (optional) arguments

9.9. Packing and unpacking function arguments

9.10. Testing function outputs : unit testing

9.11. Type-hinting

9.12. Summary

10. Classes and object oriented programming

10.1. Introduction

10.2. Defining classes

10.3. Setters and getters

10.4. Representation

10.5. Subclasses (and superclasses)

10.6. Static methods

10.7. Abstract base classes

10.8. Summary

11. Data science with astronomical catalogs

11.1. Introduction

11.2. Filetypes and reading in data

11.3. Working with tabular data in pandas

11.4. Research example : analysis with 3DHST

11.5. Summary

12. Vectorization and runtime improvements

12.1. Introduction

12.2. Identifying bottlenecks

12.3. Fast array operations with Numpy

12.4. Jax

12.5. Summary

13. Astronomical inference

13.1. Introduction

13.2. Fitting a line to data

13.3. X 2 fitting

13.4. Bayesian inference

13.5. Summary

14. Software development

14.1. Introduction

14.2. Why (and when) to make a Python package a Python package

14.3. Organizing packages : modules and submodules

14.4. Custom exceptions and warnings

14.5. Installation and development

14.6. Github and version control

14.7. Summary

15. Concluding remarks

15.1. Concluding remarks.

Notes:

"Version: 20240501"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references.

Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 1, 2024).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9780750351478

9780750351461

OCLC:

1435473313

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.