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VisualAstro

VisualAstro is an astrophysical visualization system with functions for easy visualization and manipulation of astronomical data. The package aims to make publication-ready plots with minimal commands.

Features

• Unified interface for Matplotlib, Astropy, NumPy, spectral-cube, specutils, and other astronomy packages
• Custom mathtext stylesheets without LaTeX installation as well as many other styles for publication-quality figures
• Colorblind safe alternative colorsets, and colormaps
• User-friendly interface with many convenience methods that integrate with Matplotlib and other packages

Installation

Currently, the most stable version of python for VisualAstro is version >=3.10. To install VisualAstro, it is advised to create a new conda environment if possible:

$ conda create -n visualastro -c conda-forge python=3.13
$ conda activate visualastro

Then install the dependencies with:

$ conda install -c conda-forge \
    astropy matplotlib numpy scipy

Optional dependencies can also be installed if you plan to use related functionalities:

$ conda install -c conda-forge \
    colorspacious dust_extinction regions reproject spectral-cube scienceplots specutils tqdm

And finally run:

$ pip install visualastro

For additional interactive functionality inside of jupyter lab:

$ conda install -c conda-forge ipympl ipywidgets jupyterlab

For classic jupyter notebook users:

$ conda install -c conda-forge ipympl ipywidgets notebook jupyter_server notebook-shim

NOTE: To ensure that interactive mode works in notebooks, first activate your conda environment and then run jupyter notebook!

Documentation

VisualAstro is still under development! A full documentation of the package's features is coming soon.

Check the examples folder for notebook tutorials!

Dependencies

VisualAstro requires:

astropy, matplotlib, numpy, and scipy.

Optional dependencies

Optionally, some functionalities of VisualAstro require:

• Image Data: regions, reproject
• Cube Data: spectral-cube
• Spectra: specutils, dust_extinction
• Extra Stylesheets: scienceplots
• Color Utilities: cmasher, colorspacious, tol-colors
• Progress Bar: tqdm

If you try to use functionalities that require an optionally dependent package but do not have that package installed, VisualAstro will raise an ImportError and prompt you to install that package.

Examples

Example colorsets:

Example fontstyles:

Credits

Fonts

VisualAstro includes multiple mathtext fonts:

Concrete Math, distributed under the SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE from a release by:

author = Daniel Flipo
year = 2022-2026
url = https://ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/concmath-otf?lang=en

Libertinus Math, distributed under the SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE from a release by:

authors = Caleb Maclennan, Libertinus Project Authors
year = 2012-2024
url = https://github.com/alerque/libertinus V7.051

New Computer Modern, distributed under GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE from a release by:

author = Antonis Tsolomitis
location = Samos, Greece
year = 2019--2026
url = https://ctan.org/texarchive/fonts/newcomputermodern?lang=en

VisualAstro includes Hershey-style TrueType fonts from the smplotlib project by Jiaxuan Li, used under the MIT License. Citation:

@software{jiaxuan_li_2023_8126529,
  author       = {Jiaxuan Li},
  title        = {AstroJacobLi/smplotlib: v0.0.9},
  month        = jul,
  year         = 2023,
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  version      = {v0.0.9},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.8126529},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8126529},
}