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IntroductionΒΆ

ATpy is a high-level Python package providing a way to manipulate tables of astronomical data in a uniform way. The two main features of ATpy are:

  • It provides a Table class that contains data stored in a NumPy structured array, along with meta-data to describe the columns, and methods to manipulate the table (e.g. adding/removing/renaming columns, selecting rows, changing values).
  • It provides built-in support for reading and writing to several common file/database formats, including FITS, VO, and IPAC tables, and SQLite, MySQL and PostgreSQL databases, with a very simple API.

In addition, ATpy provides a TableSet class that can be used to contain multiple tables, and supports reading and writing to file/database formats that support this (FITS, VO, and SQL databases).

Finally, ATpy provides support for user-written read/write functions for file/database formats not supported by default. We encourage users to send us custom read/write functions to read commonly used formats, and would be happy to integrate them into the main distribution.