The Verse – Find properties of objects in our universe (and others) without leaving Python

The Verse is a Python library of properties of objects in our universe, such as the mass and radius of the Earth and other planets.

Though The Verse can be useful for reference purposes, it is primarily being developed for use in generating physics, astronomy, and chemistry problems with realistic parameters. For example, a random planet can be chosen from the Solar System, and then its mass and radius can be used to generate a problem that involves calculating gravitational acceleration based on those properties.

The Verse is currently at an early stage of development. At present, it only contains part of the Solar System—the Sun and a few planets, with only a few properties each. Eventually, it will contain a broader range of things from our universe, such as more planetary data, stars, exoplanets, spacecraft and other vehicles, animals, elements, and particles. It will also eventually contain things from various fictional verses.

Example

>>> import theverse
>>> print(theverse.earth.equatorial_radius)
6378137.0 m
>>> for planet_name, planet_obj in theverse.solar_system.planets.items():
...     print(f'{planet_name: <10}  {planet_obj.mass}')
...
Mercury     3.3011e+23 kg
Venus       4.8675e+24 kg
Earth       5.9724e+24 kg
>>> print(theverse.earth.primary.name)
Sun
>>> print(theverse.earth.primary.mass)
1.9885e+30 kg
>>> print(theverse.sun.reference_url)
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/sunfact.html
>>> for star_name in theverse.universe.stars:
...     print(star_name)
...
Sun

Installation

Install Python 3.6+ if it is not already available on your machine. See https://www.python.org/, or use the package manager or app store for your operating system. Because The Verse requires Astropy and its dependencies (which include NumPy), you may want to consider a Python distribution like Anaconda instead.

Install setuptools for Python if it is not already installed. This can be accomplished by running

python -m pip install setuptools

on the command line. Depending on your system, you may need to use python3 instead of python. This will often be the case for Linux and OS X.

Install Astropy if it is not already installed.

Install theverse by running this on the command line:

python -m pip install theverse

Depending on your system, you may need to use python3 instead of python. This will often be the case for Linux and OS X.

Upgrading

python -m pip install theverse --upgrade

Depending on your system, you may need to use python3 instead of python. This will often be the case for Linux and OS X.

Installing the development version

If you want to install the development version to use the latest features, download theverse from GitHub, extract the files, and then run

python setup.py install

Depending on your system, you may need to use python3 instead of python. This will often be the case for Linux and OS X.

Technical details

Objects in the universe are represented as class instances. For example, the Sun is an instance of the class Star.

Physical properties are represented via a subclass of astropy.units.Quantity. This ensures that all quantities have associated units. Quantities also have reference and reference_url attributes that provide information about the source of values.

Collections of objects, like theverse.universe.stars, are instances of a dict subclass. For example, theverse.universe.stars maps star names (strings) to instances of the class Star. The dict subclass used in these cases allows values to be accessed normally (theverse.universe.stars['Sun']) and also as lowercased attributes (theverse.universe.stars.sun). The dict subclass does not support standard dict methods for adding or deleting keys; data should typically be treated as immutable once it is loaded.