the Tractor

Probabilistic astronomical source detection & measurement

authors & license

Copyright 2011-2016 Dustin Lang (University of Toronto) & David W. Hogg (NYU)

Licensed under GPLv2; see LICENSE.

install

To check out and build the code in a tractor directory:

wget -O - https://raw.github.com/dstndstn/tractor/master/checkout.sh | bash
cd tractor

Or if you prefer:

#
# Grab and install the Astrometry.net code (http://astrometry.net/downloads)
# and then...
#
git clone git@github.com:dstndstn/tractor.git
cd tractor
make

It is possible to run directly out of the checked-out tractor directory. But if you want to install it:

make
python setup.py install # --prefix=/some/place    or maybe --home=/your/place

There is a test script that renders SDSS images:

python example/tractor-sdss-synth.py

Prereqs:

• scipy (> 0.7; 0.9 works)
• numpy (>= 1.4)
• astrometry.net (often svn trunk is required)

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!