The Astropy Project: Sustaining and Growing a Community-oriented Open-source Project and the Latest Major Release (v5.0) of the Core Package

Adrian M. Price-Whelan , Pey Lian Lim , Nicholas Earl , Nathaniel Starkman , Larry Bradley , David L. Shupe , Aarya A. Patil , Lia Corrales , C. E. Brasseur , Maximilian Nöthe , Axel Donath , Erik Tollerud , Brett M. Morris , Adam Ginsburg , Eero Vaher , Benjamin A. Weaver , James Tocknell , William Jamieson , Marten H. van Kerkwijk , Thomas P. Robitaille , Bruce Merry , Matteo Bachetti , H. Moritz Günther , Thomas L. Aldcroft , Jaime A. Alvarado-Montes , Anne M. Archibald , Attila Bódi , Shreyas Bapat , Geert Barentsen , Juanjo Bazán , Manish Biswas , Médéric Boquien , D. J. Burke , Daria Cara , Mihai Cara , Kyle E. Conroy , Simon Conseil (1) , Matthew W. Craig , Robert M. Cross , Kelle L. Cruz , Francesco d'Eugenio , Nadia Dencheva , Hadrien A. R. Devillepoix , Jörg P. Dietrich , Arthur Davis Eigenbrot , Thomas Erben , Leonardo Ferreira , Daniel Foreman-Mackey , Ryan Fox , Nabil Freij , Suyog Garg , Robel Geda , Lauren Glattly , Yash Gondhalekar , Karl D. Gordon , David Grant , Perry Greenfield , Austen M. Groener , Steve Guest , Sebastian Gurovich , Rasmus Handberg , Akeem Hart , Zac Hatfield-Dodds , Derek Homeier , Griffin Hosseinzadeh , Tim Jenness , Craig K. Jones , Prajwel Joseph , J. Bryce Kalmbach , Emir Karamehmetoglu , Mikołaj Kałuszyński , Michael S. P. Kelley , Nicholas Kern , Wolfgang E. Kerzendorf , Eric W. Koch , Shankar Kulumani , Antony Lee (2) , Chun Ly , Zhiyuan Ma , Conor Macbride , Jakob M. Maljaars , Demitri Muna , N. A. Murphy , Henrik Norman , Richard O'Steen , Kyle A. Oman , Camilla Pacifici , Sergio Pascual , J. Pascual-Granado , Rohit R. Patil , Gabriel I. Perren , Timothy E. Pickering , Tanuj Rastogi , Benjamin R. Roulston , Daniel F. Ryan , Eli S. Rykoff , Jose Sabater , Parikshit Sakurikar , Jesús Salgado , Aniket Sanghi , Nicholas Saunders , Volodymyr Savchenko , Ludwig Schwardt , Michael Seifert-Eckert , Albert Y. Shih , Anany Shrey Jain , Gyanendra Shukla , Jonathan Sick , Chris Simpson , Sudheesh Singanamalla , Leo P. Singer , Jaladh Singhal , Manodeep Sinha , Brigitta M. Sipőcz , Lee R. Spitler , David Stansby , Ole Streicher , Jani Šumak , John D. Swinbank , Dan S. Taranu , Nikita Tewary , Grant R. Tremblay , Miguel De Val-Borro , Samuel J. van Kooten , Zlatan Vasović , Shresth Verma , José Vinícius de Miranda Cardoso , Peter K. G. Williams , Tom J. Wilson , Benjamin Winkel , W. M. Wood-Vasey , Rui Xue , Peter Yoachim , Chen Zhang , Andrea Zonca

1 LAM - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille
2 LP2N - Laboratoire Photonique, Numérique et Nanosciences

The Astropy Project supports and fosters the development of open-source and openly developed Python packages that provide commonly needed functionality to the astronomical community. A key element of the Astropy Project is the core package astropy, which serves as the foundation for more specialized projects and packages. In this article, we summarize key features in the core package as of the recent major release, version 5.0, and provide major updates on the Project. We then discuss supporting a broader ecosystem of interoperable packages, including connections with several astronomical observatories and missions. We also revisit the future outlook of the Astropy Project and the current status of Learn Astropy. We conclude by raising and discussing the current and future challenges facing the Project.

Keywords: Astronomy software; Open source software; Astronomy data analysis; Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Domains: Sciences of the Universe [physics]; Astrophysics [astro-ph]

Adrian M. Price-Whelan, Pey Lian Lim, Nicholas Earl, Nathaniel Starkman, Larry Bradley, et al.. The Astropy Project: Sustaining and Growing a Community-oriented Open-source Project and the Latest Major Release (v5.0) of the Core Package. The Astrophysical Journal, 2022, 935, ⟨10.3847/1538-4357/ac7c74⟩. ⟨insu-03780752⟩