Exploring the Astropy Starscape: Using Python for Astronomy; What's There, What's Coming, and What is Needed

This three-hour session is intended to educate astronomers about the growing capabilities for data analysis in Python. We will be giving an overview of the existing tools available in astropy and affiliated packages. The session will include demos of some of the more generally useful tools, and provide time for attendees to ask questions about the capabilities of the astropy environment as well as provide feedback about what their needs are or what prevents them from using Python in their own work. An emphasis of the session will be how to efficiently find information and interact with astropy community, including how to contribute documentation, tutorials, bug fixes, or new tools. Does not require experience in Python nor having a laptop with the tools installed.

Tools covered include the astropy packages units and quantities, tables, FITS and ascii data I/O access, coordinate and time utilities, modeling and fitting framework, world coordinates, and the imexamine, Glue and Ginga visualization tools. 

Astropy: http://astropy.org

Tutorial information: https://github.com/astropy/AAS2015