AstroBetter post

[bmorris3]

Hi astroplanners (@eteq @cdeil @adrn @jberlanga @ejeschke @kvyh @stephtdouglas @StuartLittlefair @bsipocz; sorry if I'm missing someone or spamming everyone),

@kelle attended this summer's dotastro meeting, and says that she thinks astroplan is under-utilized/under-advertised. She offered to lend us the platform of AstroBetter where we could post a tutorial.

Is anyone interested in collaborating with me (and @kelle if she's interested) in putting together a tutorial that would be well-suited to an AstroBetter post? If you aren't interested, feel free to unfollow this issue.

Here are some previous software posts that show what has been done before:

• on astropy
• on MATISSE
• on Blender

Our post could take the form of:

• a short narrative description of the package, who it's good for and what it can do, and a link to the tutorials already on the RTD page
• a screen-capture video tutorial for doing some common task with astroplan (e.g. make airmass plots, calculate when a target is observable)
• ...or something else

How should we get the word out?

[kelle]

There's also this post on IObserve: http://www.astrobetter.com/blog/2011/09/14/iobserve-the-astronomical-observing-app-weve-been-waiting-for/

On Tuesday, July 26, 2016, Brett M. Morris notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi astroplanners (@eteq https://github.com/eteq @cdeil https://github.com/cdeil @adrn https://github.com/adrn @jberlanga https://github.com/jberlanga @ejeschke https://github.com/ejeschke @kvyh https://github.com/kvyh @stephtdouglas https://github.com/stephtdouglas @StuartLittlefair https://github.com/StuartLittlefair @bsipocz https://github.com/bsipocz; sorry if I'm missing someone or spamming everyone),

@kelle https://github.com/kelle attended this summer's dotastro meeting, and says that she thinks astroplan is under-utilized/under-advertised. She offered to lend us the platform of AstroBetter http://www.astrobetter.com where we could post a tutorial.

Is anyone interested in collaborating with me (and @kelle https://github.com/kelle if she's interested) in putting together a tutorial that would be well-suited to an AstroBetter post? If you aren't interested, feel free to unfollow this issue.

Here are some previous software posts that show what has been done before:

• on astropy http://www.astrobetter.com/blog/2014/07/07/astropy-tutorials-learn-how-to-do-common-astro-tasks-with-astropy-and-python/
• on MATISSE http://www.astrobetter.com/blog/2016/06/27/matisse-the-asdc-web-tool-for-the-planetary-exploration/
• on Blender http://www.astrobetter.com/blog/2013/08/05/visualizing-astronomical-data-with-blender/

Our post could take the form of:

• a short narrative description of the package, who it's good for and what it can do, and a link to the tutorials already on the RTD page
• a screen-capture video tutorial for doing some common task with astroplan (e.g. make airmass plots, calculate when a target is observable)
• ...or something else

How should we get the word out?

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/astropy/astroplan/issues/193, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABYJmXbwvT02QpRq7pb7tceUOqUoRn6Hks5qZtPLgaJpZM4JVzri .

kelle (via iOS)

[cdeil]

If you or @kelle have the time, I think a screencast would be great (and could also be linked to from the astroplan docs).

I'm not aware of many screencasts for Python packages ... off the top of the hat (head?) I only remember this one where I learned a lot and that I did like: http://click.pocoo.org/5/quickstart/#screencast-and-examples

Other things that might help astroplan adoption:

• make a v0.2 release. Even if there are no features, there's #191 which means pip install astroplan fails for people with latest Python.
• Add a logo so that people can plug astroplan better when giving talks or making posters.
• Remove the big fat red warning from https://astroplan.readthedocs.io/en/latest/#what-is-astroplan . Still point out the other packages, but don't show the warning like this any more. The API has been there for a year and there's no concrete plans to change it, right?

[bsipocz]

This is great, thanks @kelle. I can help out a bit if needed.

I can second all of @cdeil's comments, and have a few suggestions:

• I think the astrobetter post will have even better impact if there is a new release, including the scheduling functionality, thus it would make sense to wait until the end of gsoc and when 0.2 is out.
• I haven't used this other than just the odd tries, but there are a few apps that are using astroplan, it may be useful to link them even though they are super experimental (e.g. http://whatsup.icrar.org/ or http://astroplan.herokuapp.com/)
• In the meantime, make an imminent release, e.g. 0.1.1 so that the package builds with python 3.5.2. The fix is already merged for that.

[bmorris3]

(I'm pretty sure http://whatsup.icrar.org/ isn't running astroplan, I think Aaron Robotham wrote an R package that's doing the work in there.)

[bsipocz]

You must be definitely right. (I heard about it at dotastro8 from third party people who said it's based on astroplan, but then wondered how could I not hear about it before, and why Geert started the app at pyastro16.)

[kelle]

I have no time to help out with this other than to nag yall. Since there was a version released and it got some attention on Twitter, I think now would be a great time for a blog post. And yes, honestly, I think a screencast would be the most effective. Otherwise, a demo of functionality with screenshots.

[asgr]

Aaron Robotham here- http://whatsup.icrar.org/ does not use astroplan. It mostly uses the astrolibR package (based on http://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov) with some bespoke routines. Within the realm of proposed use it is therefore pretty well tested (and not particularly experimental). No bugs flagged in a couple of years now at least :-)