miriad-python

This is the homepage of the miriad-python package, which provides a bridge between the Python programming language and the MIRIAD radio astronomy package. It provides facilities for:

For more information, see the Miriad-Python Manual, which is a work in progress.

Miriad-Python is almost entirely Free Software, licensed under the GPL version 3 or later. Small portions of it are licensed under a BSD license with an advertising clause that limits your ability to make advertising claims using the names of the authors of those portions. With that exception, Miriad-Python is available for inspection and use by anyone for any purpose. Your contributions to the software are encouraged and welcomed.

Latest release: miriad-python 0.6 (source only), SHA1 checksum c70ee78afd59a631110a23a94803e2b9d1c49d68, git commit acbfa731c5da07c0270b03e9e93c11f4c9b7a4d4

Development: done in this Git repository, mirrored in GitHub — go ahead and fork away!

News

2011 April 28: You wouldn’t know it by looking at this webpage, but Miriad-Python has been evolving steadily over the past year and a half. Today I’m releasing version 0.6, which is a vast improvement over the previous public version. It is much more correct and also much easier to use for a variety of tasks. Check it out!

2009 September 28: The first public release of Miriad-Python, version 0.1.0, has been posted, and this website has been created. Even though this is the first release, it should be quite stable and useful. I’ve been using Miriad-Python for the past year or so and it’s worked very well and needed no substantial changes to the overall package design. This is a source-only release.

Download and Installation

Miriad-Python is currently released only as source code. The latest release is version 0.6. Miriad-Python requires at NumPy with development files (in particular, the program f2py) installed. Miriad-Python definitely works with NumPy version 1.5, and may work with NumPy as old as 1.0, but I haven’t tested which versions work and which don’t.

Miriad-Python also requires a recent working installation of MIRIAD. Because there are several flavors of MIRIAD that are built and released in different ways, it’s difficult for us to specify what exactly is needed. Version 4.1.1 or newer of MIRIAD should work, but somewhat older versions should also be fine. Installations of MIRIAD built with the “new-style” build system (using configure) are required. The Miriad-Python build configuration step should give you an error if it encounters an install of MIRIAD that it can’t handle. We apologize for being unable to give more specific requirements, but installations of MIRIAD vary highly and many MIRIAD installs do not derive from standardized released packages.

Miriad-Python is built using the standard GNU tools autoconf, automake, and libtool. Linux programmers and system administrators should be familiar with these tools if you have any problems. The generic recipe for building the software is:

  1. Unpack the source code into a working directory.
  2. In that directory, run ./configure --help to see a list of package setup options. In particular, note the --with-miriad and --prefix options.
  3. Run ./configure with any options you need.
  4. Run make install.

For more detailed instructions, see the file INSTALL provided with the source code, or consult your local system administrator, or email Peter Williams at pwilliams@astro.berkeley.edu.

Documentation

Miriad-Python has a work-in-progress manual. We hope that you’ll find that the manual provides a good overview of the design of Miriad-Python, but there are unfortunately still gaps in its coverage. If you’re curious about Miriad-Python, we encourage you to take a look at the manual and see if it fits your needs.

Development and Contributions

We aspire for Miriad-Python to have an open and welcoming development model. Peter Williams (pwilliams@astro.berkeley.edu) has been the primary developer but he is happy for others to become involved in the project. The source code to Miriad-Python is stored in a Git repository that’s accessible for read-only access via HTTP here. For read-write access, contact Peter and he’ll figure something out.

There are currently no mailing lists or bug trackers for Miriad-Python because the userbase is too small to warrant them. If that changes, they’ll be set up.

Contact

For more information, contact Peter Williams at pwilliams@astro.berkeley.edu.