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GSoC 2013 Organization Application
David PS
sunpy
SunPy
SunPy is a new (just 2 years old) open-source project which aims to provide a complete framework in Python for solar, heliospheric, and space weather data analysis. We envision SunPy, within the python ecosystem, as a powerful and free tool for analysing and processing solar data. SunPy is currently developing as a flexable tool for a solar data analysis. However much more work is required to make SunPy into a viable alternative 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. The SunPy communtiy is growing to include more users and developers, and to encourage the adoption of the open source ethos into the solar physics community. We have an active, friendly IRC channel and mailing list offering quick bug fixes and technical assistance.
New and Simplified BSD licenses
New
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
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 hopefully attract new contributors.
After two years of development, this is the first time that SunPy has applied to participate in the Google Summer of Code scheme. Despite the increase in our users and developers, it is our succesful participation in the ESA Summer of Code in Space programme have made massive contributions to the projects development. 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.
sunpy on Freenode.net
What criteria did you use to select your mentors for this year's program? Please be as specific as possible.
Each idea proposed has two mentors linked with it. These mentors are experts in the given subject area and they are active developers in Sunpy. Though not all are experts Python programmers, the SunPy community will be available to support Python questions. Also we have established links with webservice developers from solar and heliosphere data archives in Europe and USA which will participate in the discussions to help us to implement the access to their services. All mentors are experienced users of solar data, with experience in data acquisition, analysis or both.
If there's an idea proposed by any student that has not been proposed before, then we will choose the best mentors for achieving that purpose considering their expertise and their availability (no mentor should have more than two students).
The students will have the flexibility to accommodate his/her other duties as a student with the project. However, students are expected to be in regular contact with the mentors assigned and with the community (irc, mail-list, dev-Google+ hangouts and by writing blog posts on a regular basis on the SunPy site). The mentors and the student have to agree on a time to meet every week for at least one hour, and discuss the evolution of the project. Also, the student is expected to have his git repository on github up to date, so the mentors and all the SunPy community can review the progress achieved.
In the case that the student does not show any progress, the administrator of SunPy will study the specific case to solve any issues the student may have with the project. However, if the student completely disappears and if there is no reply after efforts to contact him/her, then we will understand as s/he has broken the agreement and we will contact the administration of GSOC for further actions. The student's progress will be evaluated and the project mentors will be responsible for folding the existing code into the SunPy project.
In case any of the mentors has either a temporal or permanent unavailability to commit as such, the project administrator will be responsible for finding a new mentor. The SunPy project is large enough that it will not be difficult to find another mentor that is familiar with the project.
What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before and during the program?
We have created a page with guidelines on how to get more likely to be accepted by us under the GSoC programme. This includes the interaction with the community (IRC, mail-list) and ask mentors for further details in the projects they would like to participate. The community will also encourage them to think on which problems will be interesting to tackle (there's a large list of feature request on the SunPy github repository).
Once the students has started to work with us under GSoC, they have to meet with their mentors weekly, they shall write regularly blog post on the SunPy site describing their progress, they will be encourage to discuss code implementation using the mailing-list when the discussion involves a large fraction of the community, and should be available on the IRC channel to ask and offer help to the rest of the team.
Also, they will be asked to participate in the creation of posters, presentation an/or tutorials to show in solar physics conferences. If the work done leads on a research publication the student will be animated to collaborate in the preparation of the publication.
What will you do to encourage that your accepted students stick with the project after Google Summer of Code concludes?
We aim to involve all the new people with the community as much as we can. GSoC students won't be less. We hope to convince them of the attractive and usability that our projects have for the long shoot. As solar physicist are new to Python, we will try to invite the students to give SunPy tutorials to the solar physics institutes near their home location. This will help to the student to get a better understanding of the needs in the community and to get closer to the users and the field. This may provide the students a big push in his career, and open new doors in the solar physics research world.
Are you a new organization who has a Googler or other organization to vouch for you? If so, please list their name(s) here.
No (is it here where we would put PSF?)
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.
No