Installation

Install AstroKit

  • step 1: pip install

pip install astrokit

  • step 2: write your own config file
    create a new file named .astrokit_config.yaml in your home directory. Here is an example (also in the .astrokit_config_template.yaml file):

# software directory
PATH_SEX:  # SExtractor program file directory
  /opt/homebrew/Cellar/sextractor/2.28.0/share/sextractor
PATH_EAZY:  # EAZY program file directory
  /Users/rui/Applications/eazy-photoz

# Quick Directory
DIR_DOWNLOAD:  # Default save file path
  /Users/rui/Downloads
DIR_DATA:  # local data root directory. Astrokit will search datasets in this directory
  /Users/rui/Data

  • step 3: Enjoy it!

import astrokit as ak

🔔 Tip: Because a lot of dependencies are required, it is recommended to use Miniconda to create a new environment and install AstroKit in it. All required packages are listed in the requirements.txt file.

# Create a new conda environment
conda create -n astro python=3.13
# Activate the environment
conda activate astro
# Install Required packages
pip install -r requirements.txt
# Install AstroKit
pip install astrokit

Install Auxiliary Softwares

🔔 Note that not all auxiliary softwares are required. It is depends on which modules you want to use. First of all, create a directory for auxiliary software installation, e.g. ~/opt/

cd ~
mkdir opt

Then, add this in your shell configuration file (e.g. ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc):

# Applications
export PATH="/home/rui/opt:$PATH"

Finally, restart your terminal or run source ~/.zshrc to make the changes take effect.

STILTS Installation

  • Introduction: STILTS is the command-line counterpart of TOPCAT which provides a powerful set of tools for very large tabluar data. It is widely used in astronomy for manipulating and visualizing tabular data.

  • For MacOS, you can use Homebrew to install STILTS:

brew install --cask topcat --no-quarantine

  • For Linux, following steps are recommended to install TOPCAT and STILTS together:

mkdir ~/opt/topcat
cd ~/opt/topcat

# download the latest version of TOPCAT and STILTS
wget https://www.star.bristol.ac.uk/mbt/topcat/topcat-extra.jar  # bloated version including Parquet file format support
wget https://www.star.bristol.ac.uk/mbt/topcat/topcat
wget https://www.star.bristol.ac.uk/mbt/stilts/stilts
chmod +x topcat
chmod +x stilts

Then, adding following content to environment variable

export PATH="/home/rui/opt/topcat:$PATH"

  • Test TOPCAT and STILTS installation:

topcat -version
stilts -version