PYTHON for Variable Star Astronomy: A Status Report (Abstract)

Volume 48 number 1 (2020)

Matt Craig

1104 7th Avenue South, Moorhead, MN 56563; mcraig@mnstate.edu

Isobel Snellenberger

address correspondence to Matt Craig, 1104 7th Avenue South, Moorhead, MN 56563; mcraig@mnstate.edu

Madelyn Madsen

address correspondence to Matt Craig, 1104 7th Avenue South, Moorhead, MN 56563; mcraig@mnstate.edu

Abstract

(Abstract only) This review presents the current state of efforts to leverage software developed in part by large institutions like the Space Telescope Science Institute for use by AAVSO members. Over the past two years substantial progress has been made in providing an image viewer, image reduction tools, aperture photometry, differential photometry, and color corrections. The amount of code specific to AAVSO functionality is reasonably small, with most of the critical code part of the Astropy project. In addition, there are new educational materials available for people new to using python for image calibration. Perspectives of two relatively new users of the software are included.