APLpy

Python users who wish to extend the functionality of their installation with even more feature could be looking for a way to implement astronomical data plotting in their work.

Being deployed as a TAR archive, the Python extension APLpy was developed to provide people with the means to produce publication-quality plots of astronomical imaging data, in FITS format.

Based on the Matplotlib, the powerful and interactive plotting package, the extension is capable of producing output files in numerous graphical formats. Some of these include EPS, PDF, PS, PNG or SVG.

Some of the extension’s features include the ability to construct the plots interactively or through scripts, display gray scale, color scale or three-color RGB images for FITS format files and generate co-aligned FITS cubes for building three-color RGB images.

People will be able to make plots from FITS files with arbitrary position velocity and slice multidimensional FITS cubes. Any number of contour sets can be overlaid, customizable shapes such as circles, ellipses or rectangles can be plotted and one can also overlay ds9 region files.

Color bars, scale bars or beams can be displayed and the appearance of the labels or ticks can be customized to meet the specific requirements of every user.

Panning, zooming are available and people can save any of the preferred views as full publication-quality plots.