astrodb-template-db

A template for astronomical databases. This is a template repository — you can use this to create your own repository, then build your use case from there on out.

We encourage users to follow the detailed best practices for astronomical databases outlined in Chen et al. 2022.

Installation instructions

For detailed and up-to-date installation and database setup instructions, see the astrodb-scripts installation instructions.

How does the database work?

[todo: add a bunch of clear description here] At the user level, customizing this database involves working with the schema. In database-speak, a "schema" describes how various "tables" (aggregates of related data) are related to one another.

Under the hood, this template leans heavily on AstrodbKit2, a codebase built on SQLAlchemy.

Units

Per Chen et al. 2022, we explicitly define the units for each table in their name (e.g., in the Sources table, the column with Right Ascension values is named ra_deg). Doing so removes unit ambiguity when querying and modifying the database.

We plan to support passing Astropy units to the database, with the database automatically converting into the internal units of each table upon ingest. We aim to have internal tests require that each table with a quantity has units in the table metadata that resolve to an Astropy unit.