GSoC 2013 Organization Application

Organizer

David PS

Organization ID

sunpy

Organization name

SunPy

Organization description

SunPy is a new (just 2 years) open-source project which aims to provide a complete framework in Python for solar, heliospheric, and space weather data analysis. We envision it as an alternate choice to the ''de facto'' standard library SolarSoft (SSW) that is widely used within the solar community. SSW is based on the Interactive Data Language (IDL) programming environment, which is propriety software, with costly recurring licensing fees. Since SSW is built with IDL, it limits the access to solar data analysis to those people and institutions who can afford the license fees and makes it difficult for amateurs or institutions with limited resources to become involved. Python is the perfect alternative to build a solar data analysis framework, as it is freely available to everyone and is already being used as a scientific data analysis environment in other science fields (NumPy, SciPy, PyRAF, Astropy) with many already-written scientific libraries available. Additionally, it can be used interactively (Python command-line), which is very close to how users already work with SSW in IDL.

Organization home page url

http://www.sunpy.org/

Main organization license

New and Simplified BSD licenses

Veteran/New

New

Backup Admin

Cadair

If you chose "veteran" in the dropdown above, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation. Please also list your pass/fail rate for each year.

N/A

If you chose "new" in the dropdown above, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?

No.

Why is your organization applying to participate in Google Summer of Code 2013? What do you hope to gain by participating?

Participating in Google Summer of Code would not only help us expand SunPy by incorporating new functionalities, but it will also promote our efforts in other communities beside solar physics community and thereby attract new contributors.

After two years of development, this is the first time that SunPy applies to participate in the Google Summer of Code. In this two years we have gathered more and more developers, but it has been the ESA summer of code in Space programme which have boost our development by funding 2 students to work in SunPy the last two summers. The first one was then contracted the last summer by Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) to add a functionality to SunPy to analyse data from a network of solar radio spectrometers (e-callisto) hosted in many places around the world. This has enabled to these institutes with low resources to don't depend of IDL.

By participating on Google Summer of Code we also hope to use it as an educational instrument to the wonders of solar physics and space weather, and attract more people to study of astrophysics.

What is the URL for your Ideas list?

GSoC 2013 Ideas

What is the main development mailing list for your organization?

SunPy-Dev

What is the main IRC channel for your organization?

sunpy on Freenode.net

What criteria did you use to select your mentors for this year's program? Please be as specific as possible.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?

What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before and during the program?

What will you do to encourage that your accepted students stick with the project after Google Summer of Code concludes?

Are you a new organization who has a Googler or other organization to vouch for you? If so, please list their name(s) here.

Are you an established or larger organization who would like to vouch for a new organization applying this year? If so, please list their name(s) here.