the Tractor

Probabilistic astronomical source detection & measurement

authors & license

Licensed under GPLv2; see LICENSE.

install

First, install the Astrometry.net code. (https://astrometry.net/downloads or https://github.com/dstndstn/astrometry.net/tags). You can do this by grabbing the code and using "make", or you can install the python code directly using pip:

pip install git+https://github.com/dstndstn/astrometry.net.git

Then grab the Tractor code:

git clone git@github.com:dstndstn/tractor.git
cd tractor

make
# OR
python3 setup.py build_ext --inplace --with-ceres --with-cython

It is possible to run directly out of the checked-out tractor directory. But if you want to install it, you can use pip, optionally with flags to enable Ceres Solver (requires the Ceres library), and Cython:

pip install -v --install-option="--with-ceres" --install-option="--with-cython" .

There is a test script that renders SDSS images:

python examples/tractor-sdss-synth.py

Prereqs:

scipy
numpy
astrometry.net

Other packages used in various places include:

fitsio: https://github.com/esheldon/fitsio
emcee: http://dan.iel.fm/emcee/current

documentation:

Horribly incomplete, but online at http://thetractor.org/doc and http://thetractor.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

collaboration:

We are trying to move from a "Research code that only we use" phase to "Research code that other people can use". We are happy to hear your feedback; please feel free to file Issues. And naturally we will be pleased to see pull requests!