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# JuliaAstro meetings
Join: **[Zoom meeting link](https://ucl.zoom.us/j/98048402367?pwd=YlVmemZydVZkMkR5aFp6VzgxV3d4Zz09)**
## Ideas for the future
### Topics
Add your suggestions:
### Volunteers for presentations
If you're happy to give an _informal_ 5-10-minute presentation about how you use Julia in astronomy, please add your name below:
- Zack Li: cosmological perturbation theory with [*Bolt*](https://github.com/xzackli/Bolt.jl)
- Miles Lucas: simulating coronagraphic point spread functions
- Adam Wheeler: can talk about [Korg](https://github.com/ajwheeler/Korg.jl)
## 2023-08-24 19:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- Paul Barrett (GWU)
- ...
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- Request for volunteers to assist with the Julia Tutorial for 243th AAS Meeting
- Solicit interest in ADASS 23 BoF
- Discussion of fundamental astronomy modules, e.g., CASAcore, Astrometry, etc.
### Notes
- ...
## 2023-05-25 19:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- Paul Barrett (GWU)
- Dave MacMahon (UCB)
- ...
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- Julia Tutorials for Astronomical Meetings
### Notes
- ...
## 2023-04-28 19:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- Paul Barrett (GWU)
- Dave MacMahon (UCB)
- ...
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- Julia Tutorials for Astronomical Meetings
### Notes
- ...
## 2023-03-24 19:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- Paul Barrett (GWU)
- ...
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- Julia Tutorials for Astronomical Meetings
### Notes
- ...
## 2023-02-24 19:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- Paul Barrett (GWU)
- ...
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- Julia Tutorials for Astronomical Meetings
### Notes
- ...
## 2023-01-27 19:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- Mosè Giordano (UCL)
- Dave MacMahon (UCB)
- ...
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- ...
### Notes
- ...
## 2022-12-01 19:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- William Thompson (University of Victoria)
- Mosè Giordano (UCL)
- Adam Wheeler (Ohio State)
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- Action item: William to update and merge unified docs before next meeting
### Notes
- ...
## 2022-10-28 18:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- Paul Tiede (Harvard CfA)
- Mosè Giordano (UCL)
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- ...
### Notes
- Paul mentioned the need of having a lightweight version of [`AstroImages.jl`](https://github.com/JuliaAstro/AstroImages.jl) which only deals with the array interface, without the plotting stuff. Maybe [`SkyImages.jl`](https://gitlab.com/aplavin/SkyImages.jl) can satisfy the need?
## 2022-09-23 18:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- Paul Barrett (GWU)
- Martín Mestre
- Miles Lucas (UH/IfA)
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- SkyCoords functionalities as in astropy
- Some progr
- Mosè Giordano (UCL)ess on breaking up packages and other package movement in ecosystem (Miles)
- Transits.jl -> Orbits.jl (orbits!), Transits.jl (light curves)
- Photometry.jl -> BackgroundMeshes.jl (background estimation), SourceExtraction.jl (daophot-esque algorithms), Photometry.jl (aperture photometry)
- PhotonTransferCurve.jl (JuliaPhysics -> JuliaHCI)
- I also want to also work on PhotonCountingHistograms.jl
### Notes
- ...
## 2022-08-26 18:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- Paul Barrett (GWU)
- Will Thompson (UVic)
- Mose Giordano (UCL)
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- WT: docs overhaul proposal
- ...
### Notes
- Will added new tutorials at https://juliaastro.org/dev/tutorials/
- Open PR: https://github.com/JuliaAstro/JuliaAstro.github.io/pull/27 ([preview](http://juliaastro.org/previews/PR27/modules/Optimization/))
- interesting features: cross-links, being able to search all docs in a single page
- cons: all packages need to be compatible with each other (at the moment they all do, but will they keep working together in the future? but it's good to keep all packages actually compatible)
- version of the package is not shown, we should at least have a link to the up-to-date docs
- Paul's working on Novas.jl
## 2022-06-24 18:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- Paul Barrett (GWU)
- William Thompson (University of Victoria). Unable to attend due to travel
- Mosè Giordano (UCL)
- Eric Ford (Penn State)
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- JuliaCon 2022
+ Minisymposium on Julia in Astronomy & Astrophysics Research (contact Eric Ford, Penn State)
Please complete [this form](https://forms.gle/jEGvGrMFLozLFpFE6) if you would be interested in contributing (e.g., a short talk on how Julia has enhanced your science and the challenges you encountered; or serving on a panel to discuss what contributions could significantly accelerate the adoption of Julia among the astronomical research community).
+ Other talks of note to Astronomers?
### Notes
- Minisymposium: talks where people can talk about how they used julia, sharing their experience, what went well, what didn't go well.
- https://speakerdeck.com/eford/why-your-next-project-should-use-julia
- AstroImages.jl v0.3 release (W. Thompson)
- Unable to attend today due to travel
- AstroImages.jl 0.3 released with new docs available here: https://juliaastro.github.io/AstroImages.jl/dev/
- See also Pluto notebook showing DS9 style interaction: https://github.com/JuliaAstro/AstroImages.jl/blob/master/examples/imview-pluto.jl
- Would love feedback on the package
- Goal is to show how to complete common tasks in docs including other packages
- So far added ImageFiltering, ImageTransformations, and Photometry.jl
- Additional package demos or ideas *greatly* appreciated
- Hosted Pluto server (W. Thompson)
- CADC (Canadian Astronomical Data Centre) now has Pluto images available through their Science Portal.
- Researchers (can be international) can put in a request and access a Pluto VM through browser with up to 16 cores, 192Gb of RAM co-located with their data centre
- In-situ processing of data from Gemini, JCMT, HST, JWST, etc.
- Let me know if you'd like to give it a spin
## 2022-05-27 18:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- Paul Barrett (GWU)
- Mosè Giordano (UCL)
- Alexander Plavin (Lebedev Physical Institute)
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- Improving PyCall to efficiently access string arrays.
### Notes
- [Numpy arrays of `str` dtype are not converted to Arrays `PyCall#901`](https://github.com/JuliaPy/PyCall.jl/issues/901)
- We have a GSoC student working on [Spectral Timing in Julia](https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/programs/2022/projects/M1uhkggE), porting [stingray](https://github.com/StingraySoftware/stingray) to Julia
## 2022-04-29 18:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- Kiran Shila (Caltech)
- ~~Miles Lucas (Institute for Astronomy / U. Hawaii~~ (forgot my group meeting is at same time...)
- Paul Barrett (GWU)
- Alexander Plavin (Lebedev Physical Institute)
- Mosè Giordano (UCL)
- Denis F. Cioffi (GWU)
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- Presentation from Kiran on Dedispersion and radio transients
### Notes
- Kiran's talk:
- [`Dedisp.jl`](https://github.com/kiranshila/Dedisp.jl): "Brute-force dedispersion for radio transient detection"
- Other efforts in dedispersion
- Ujjwal's [`DeDisp.jl`](https://github.com/astrogewgaw/DeDisp.jl)
- Kiran's implementation of "FDMT" [`FDMT.jl`](https://github.com/kiranshila/FDMT.jl)
- [`SIGPROC.jl`](https://github.com/kiranshila/SIGPROC.jl): "Toolkit for working with astronomical radio transients in the SIGPROC Filterbank format".
- The name of the package is up to debate
- Other packages reading this format:
- Dave's [`Blio.jl`](https://github.com/david-macmahon/Blio.jl)
- Alexander's [`FilterBank.jl`](https://gitlab.com/aplavin/FilterBank.jl)
- [`Mimir.jl`](https://github.com/kiranshila/Mimir.jl): "A radio transient detection and processing pipeline"
- We talked briefly on Rust in scientific computing
- Kiran's efforts in writing a Julia parser in Rust [`julia-syntax`](https://github.com/kiranshila/julia-syntax)
- Compared to the new Julia implementation by Chris Foster [`JuliaSyntax.jl`](https://github.com/c42f/JuliaSyntax.jl)
## 2022-03-25 18:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- Paul Barrett (GWU, Will try to attend)
- Ian Weaver (CfA)
- Paul Tiede (CfA/BHI)
- Dave MacMahon (UC Berkeley)
- Mosè giordano (UCL)
- William Thompson (UVic, NRC)
- Max Hawkins (U Alabama)
- Kazu Akiyama (MIT Haystack)
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- Presentations from Dave and Paul
- Any plans for JuliaCon? Submit proposals at https://pretalx.com/juliacon-2022/cfp, deadline 2022-04-04 11:59 (UTC)
- A Letter of Intent has been submitted for a Julia tutorial for the Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems (ADASS) meeting in early November.
- AstroImages update (William)
### Notes
- Dave gave a presentation about he uses Julia in Astronomy
- High speed data acquisition and signal processing
- Julia repositories: https://github.com/david-macmahon
- [`Blio.jl`](https://github.com/david-macmahon/Blio.jl)
- [`PyCASA.jl`](https://github.com/david-macmahon/PyCASA.jl)
- [`XGPU.jl`](https://github.com/david-macmahon/XGPU.jl)
- [`Rawx.jl`](https://github.com/david-macmahon/Rawx.jl)
- [`RadioInterferometry.jl`](https://github.com/david-macmahon/RadioInterferometry.jl)
- [`QuantizedNoise.jl`](https://github.com/david-macmahon/QuantizedNoise.jl)
- [`UVH5Splicer.jl`](https://github.com/david-macmahon/UVH5Splicer.jl)
- [`Tsys.jl`](https://github.com/david-macmahon/Tsys.jl)
- Another presentation from Paul
- Statistical modeling of Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) data
- EHT imaging has very sparse Fourier coverage, quantification of uncertainty is key
- Bayesian EHT blackhole modeling with Julia: [`Comrade.jl`](https://github.com/ptiede/Comrade.jl). Code extensively used in EHT work
- Variational Image Domain Analysis: [`VIDA.jl`](https://github.com/ptiede/VIDA.jl)
- Analytic Accretion Models: [`JuKeBOX.jl`](https://github.com/ptiede/JuKeBOX.jl). To Paul's knowledge, this is the first auto-differentiable ray-traced accretion model. Uses ForwardDiff.jl for derivatives (Zygote didn't work very well because of mutation) and works with Comrade.jl
- What I miss in Julia: better VLBI data set structure, generic radio image format, speed needs some work
- Sample astronomy Pluto notebooks
- The Pluto team is looking for community notebooks to showcase on their new website that is currently under construction [here](https://plutojl-preview.netlify.app/)
- More discussion about the site can be found on the [Zulip](https://julialang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/257776-Pluto.2Ejl-development/topic/New.20website)
## 2022-02-25 19:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- Paul Barrett (GWU)
- William Thompson (U. Victoria, National Research Council) unable to attend but see update on AstroImages below
- Alexander Plavin (PhD candidate, Lebedev Physical Institute, Moscow)
- Mosè Giordano (RSE, UCL)
- Dave MacMahon (UCB)
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- GSOC status, can anyone give a report?
- ADASS XXXII Meeting (2022 10/31-11/4, virtual), Presenting a Julia tutorial
### Notes
- Projects ideas for OpenAstronomy: https://openastronomy.org/gsoc/gsoc2022/#/projects. At the moment only collecting ideas.
- Paul is considering giving a Julia tutorial at [ADASS XXXII](https://www.adass.org/index.html), comparing with Python. Show Julia capabilities in general (also composability, units, errors, but also Symbolics.jl, CUDA.jl), but you don't have to leave your old code behind: `ccall`, `PyCall.jl` are good options.
- For context, Paul coauthored the paper [Interactive Data Analysis Environments BoF Session](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1997ASPC..125...69H/abstract) which advocated the use of Python in astronomy 25 years ago
- Another perspective of the history of the usage of Python in astronomy is given in the talk [The Development and Future of Python at STScI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_UcjjUC8bE) by Perry Greenfield
- AstroImages update (William Thompson)
- Settled on a mix of OffsetArrays to track index locations in current slice and some additional metadata for tracking what slice is selected (e.g. from a cube)
- this is a nice interface since you can eg select a pixel out of a spectral or pol. cube and get an auotmatically labelled 1D spectrum when you plot that vector
- now just need to do the grunt work of making it all work and writing tests
- could use some help making the FileIO load / save interface work
- Dave suggested for the future meetings to have individuals presenting a few slides about how they use Julia in their astro work. Maybe one or two pre-scheduled volunteers per meeting giving a ~10 minute talk. It doesn't have to be every meeting, but it could be nice way to have a bit of extended introductions as well as learning new Julian ways of doing things.
## 2022-01-28 19:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- Miles Lucas (PhD Candidate, Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii)
- Zack Li (CITA Postdoc, University of Toronto)
- Paul Barrett (Assoc. Res. Prof., GWU)
- Ian Weaver (PhD Candidate, Center for Astrophysics, Harvard)
- Kiran Shila (Astro/EE, Caltech)
- Mosè Giordano (RSE, UCL)
- Will Thompson (PhD Candidate, University of Victoria)
- Yilun Guan (Postdoc, Dunlap Institute, University of Toronto)
- Dave MacMahon (UC Berkeley)
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- Introductions for newcomers
- [AstroImages revival](https://github.com/JuliaAstro/AstroImages.jl/issues/29)? (Mosè)
- WCS `to_header`
- Google Summer of Code with [OpenAstronomy](https://openastronomy.org/). Submit a pull request to [the repository](https://github.com/OpenAstronomy/openastronomy.github.io) (Mosè)
- Taking column-major seriously (Miles)
- Current status: [CFITSIO.jl](https://github.com/JuliaAstro/CFITSIO.jl) gets pointers passed to it directly from the `cfitsio` C library. The C library reads data in row-major (because C is row-major), therefore when the pointer is addressed by Julia, the actual layout of the data is flipped from expected with, e.g., Python. (At least, that's how I understand the issue)
- This leads to an issue, especially when considering the *conversion* of Python code and the *adaption* of Julia by astronomers.
- Certain code can be completely agnostic, and just refer to the "first axis" and "second axis" when deciphering between `x` and `y`, (this is what I've done at [SubpixelRegistration.jl](https://github.com/JuliaHCI/SubpixelRegistration.jl)), but some things, like photometric apertures and PSF models, start to get really confusing to keep track of which dimension actually means what.
- So, a couple provoking questions: Should we make an effort to consistently order the dimensions of FITS data one way or the other? Is there a way to consistently apply this (e.g., using Parameters.jl). Is there a significant speed advantage between one orientation or another (imagine an image cube of `(1000, 512, 512)` vs `(512, 512, 1000)`, and cross-correlating each frame for example)? How does this affect our interface with, e.g., Plots and SAOImageDS9?
- Personally, this has bitten me a few times, and I'm pretty torn over what a good solution is.
- Radio astronomy's Measurment Set data format. My current implementation is able to read the descriptor files, but not the data files. Should I make what I have public so other can work on it, or wait until there is some basic usable code?
- Follow-up from Pluto.jl call yesterday (Ian)
- They are looking for 50 sample notebooks from the community to add to their website, and are keen to include notebooks from the astro community. Could be a good way to advertise JuliaAstro.
- One example I've been thinking of is using IPAC's [TAP service](https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/TAP/usingTAP.html) to visualize bright stars in the sky that are known exoplanet hosts, possibly with William's new work with AstroImages.jl and WCS support. Does this seem feasible?
- A quick draft using TAP with HTTP.jl can be found [here](https://icweaver.github.io/WASP-50b/html/09_pop.jl.html)
### Notes of the meeting
- https://github.com/JuliaAstro/AstroImages.jl/issues/29 is working for most images
- we need more integration between FITSIO.jl and WCS.jl
- about row- vs column-major, Miles has done benchmarks and found that row-major has better performance because that's the "native", but there should be an option in WCS to layout the array in row- vs column-major orientation
- all our packages should clearly document pixel orientation conventions, to avoid any confusion
- Zack would like to be able to dispatch on the projection of a WCS struct
- Paul will publish his package for dealing with radio measurements data
- Collaboration with Pluto.jl
- The Pluto team is looking for demo notebooks to showcase on their website, similarly to their [MIT course site](https://computationalthinking.mit.edu/Spring21/)
- The notebooks will use [static-export-template](https://github.com/JuliaPluto/static-export-template) to automatically publish to their site
- A simple example using this template with [PythonCall.jl](https://github.com/cjdoris/PythonCall.jl), a new alternative to PyCall.jl can be found [here](https://icweaver.github.io/Pluto_sample_notebooks/fun_with_python.html) ([main repo](https://github.com/icweaver/Pluto_sample_notebooks))
- [Another setup](https://icweaver.github.io/Pluto_sample_notebooks/comp_stars.html) using PythonCall.jl with astroquery
- Recent work with plotly.js and vtk.js that may be handy for performant in-browser plotting in the future, [PlutoVista.jl](https://github.com/j-fu/PlutoVista.jl)
- Pluto.jl weekly meetings (17:00 UTC every Thursday) channel on [zulip](https://julialang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/257776-Pluto.2Ejl-development/topic/Weekly.20Pluto.20meetups) and [meeting notes](https://juliapluto.github.io/weekly-call-notes/) (still playing with the formatting). All are welcome to join!
## 2021-12-09 20:00 UTC
### Participants
Add yourself (name, affiliation, any other information you want to share):
- Mosè Giordano (UCL)
- Kaj Wiik (University of Turku, Finland, EHTC)
- Haoran Feng (PhD candidate, Purple Mountain Observatory, CAS, China)
- Kiran Shila (Caltech)
- Dave MacMahon (UC Berkeley)
- Paul Barrett (GWU)
- Paul Tiede (Postdoc, Harvard CfA/BHI, EHTC)
- William Thompson (PhD candidate, University of Victoria / National Research Council of Canada)
- Ian Weaver (PhD candidate, Harvard-Smithsonian / CfA, hi!)
- Max Hawkins (U. of Alabama undergrad)
- ...
### Agenda
Propose your topic:
- Introductions
- JuliaAstro development
- GSoC
- Regular meetings?
- Composability: images ecosystem
### Notes of the meeting
* Kiran is working on [`NOVAS.jl`](https://github.com/kiranshila/NOVAS.jl)
* units for astronomy ([`UnitfulAngles.jl`](https://github.com/yakir12/UnitfulAngles.jl))
* revive [`AstroImages.jl`](https://github.com/JuliaAstro/AstroImages.jl) with new design, have a better integration with `Images.jl`
* handling FITS files is a common point of entry into research astronomy for many students, so polishing and advertising [`CCDReduction.jl`](https://github.com/JuliaAstro/CCDReduction.jl) could go a long way in outreach and buy-in for new folks
* advertise Julia packages in https://ascl.net/
* we usually apply for Google Summer of Code with the [OpenAstronomy](https://openastronomy.org/) organisation, consider the opportunity of being a student or a mentor
* in January we'll talk about making the even more regular, biweekly or monthly
* Fons is looking to add sample Pluto notebooks from the community. This might be a good way to advertise our org as well? Zulip thread [here](https://julialang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/257776-Pluto.2Ejl-development/topic/Come.20develop.20for.20Pluto!/near/264501732)