IMPRS Python Course

Today, Python is the most widely used computer language in astronomy. It is an easy to learn yet powerful scripting language, that allows both fast and easy solutions of everyday problems as well as development of large and sophisticated software packages. Although a general purpose language, a vivid community of scientists and astronomers has added and still is adding a vast amount of specialized packages that make Python an indispensable tool for scientists in general and to astronomers in particular. The course will introduce the Python language itself as well as important modules of the extensive Standard Library that comes with Python. This will cover ~50% of the available time. In the other half of the time, we will look into the NumPy, matplotlib, SciPy and Astropy packages that provide extensive functionality relevant to astronomers, such as N-dim matrix operations, 2D plotting, celestial coordinate and time transformations, access to FITS files and much more. After the course, participants should be able to solve everyday problems they encounter during their work. In addition, they should have a good foundation to find solutions for problems from areas not covered in the course. The course will have an emphasis on experimenting with Python. The only way to learn a computer language is to work with it, hence there will be plenty of opportunities to try things out.