visualens

A visual, fast interface to explore and manipulate astronomical images, catalogs, and lens models created using Lenstool.

visualens uses PyQt for fast handling of large astronomical images. Main lensing functionalities include:

• An interactive interface to create Lenstool input files and visualize and manipulate lens models,
• Fast, easy-to-run lensing calculations using Lenstool's engine,
• Visual forward modeling based on lenstronomy.

Installation:

Many visualens functions rely on Lenstool, which is easy to install through conda (highly recommended). We also recommend installing lenstronomy through conda rather than pip, before installing visualens.

Some IDEs like Spyder may cause conflicts with PyQt. We suggest installing your favorite IDE in your conda virtual environment before installing visualens.

Installation steps:

conda create -n visualens_env -c conda-forge lenstool lenstronomy python==3.12.2

conda activate visualens_env

pip install visualens

Starting guide:

If using Jupyter notebooks, run these lines in your first cell:

%gui qt5 from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication import sys app = QApplication.instance() if app is None: app = QApplication(sys.argv)

Then

from visualens import Visualens vl = Visualens()

A window should open, with a side panel accessible by clicking the top left button. Click "Open..." under the Image, Catalog, or Lens model tab to get started.

More example to come here: https://github.com/tomresseguier/Lenstool_GUI/tree/main/examples