PetroFit

[robelgeda]

Submitting Author: Robel Geda (@robelgeda)
All current maintainers: (@robelgeda, @crawfordsm)
Package Name: PetroFit
One-Line Description of Package:The PetroFit Project is an open-source effort to develop end-to-end tools for making accurate photometric measurements, estimating morphological properties, and fitting 2D models to galaxy images.
Repository Link: https://github.com/PetroFit/petrofit
Version submitted: v0.5.0 (will be updated to v1.0.0 after review)
EIC: @isabelizimm
Editor: @dhomeier
Reviewer 1: @nden
Reviewer 2: @kyleaoman
Archive:
JOSS DOI: N/A
Version accepted: v0.6.0
Date accepted: 02/28/2025

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Description

The goal of the PetroFit Python package, which is based on Astropy and Photutils, is to provide specialized tools for the astronomical community. It is designed for calculating Petrosian properties, such as radii and concentration indices of galaxies, as well as fitting galaxy light profiles. In particular, PetroFit includes tools for performing accurate photometry, segmentations, Petrosian profiling, and Sérsic fitting.

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[lwasser]

hey there @robelgeda 👋 i suspect this is an astropy package. can you kindly confirm? if so i'll work on updating the template with the astropy "check" this week as well. cc: @isabelizimm (we can chat in slack about this too! it will be our first astropy package) 🚀

[robelgeda]

Yes it is and thank you!

[isabelizimm]

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Editor comments

Welcome to the pyOpenSci community! We are so glad you are here! A few things to update on initial checks, but you all are in great shape. I really enjoyed running through your tutorials--not being someone in the astro space (haha!), I got such a great sense of accomplishment building models and making beautiful plots, even though I was just copy/pasting code 😆 Awesome work!

1. Update README.md to include installation guide
2. In the installation, there is a section that states:

Before installing PetroFit, you may need to install the required dependencies. You can do this using the requirements file located in the top directory of the repository. ...

package managers will install all the required dependencies of a package, as long as they are specified (in this package's case, in the setup.cfg in the install_requires section). If this is referring to installing tools for people to develop the PetroFit package, it should go in the CONTRIBUTING.md or Developer install instructions.

3. Add zenodo badge (I see one on the Citing and Credits) page in docs to README.md
4. Add a docstring to functions in the public API:
   • get_default_gen_sersic_bounds
   • petrosian_profile

Suggestions/random things I noticed (non-blocking to review):

• In ci_tests.yml, the prefix parameter looks to be unused. Also, it looks like you have matrix.allow_failure always set to false, so you could probably just set continue-on-error to be false. I'm not sure if this CI suite is something you plan to customize/expand more and these are set in anticipation of later changes, but at the moment it's quite repetitive.

I have never seen an Imposter syndrome disclaimer before, and I have to say it made me a little emotional--I love it so much 🤍 what an awesome note to add to a README!

[robelgeda]

Hi @isabelizimm, thank you for taking the time and your kind words! I am also sorry about the late reply, I wanted to see if I can update things quickly.

I found your suggestions very useful and have updated the main branch. For the installation, I would need to make a release to upload to pypi/pip but would prefer to wait until the review process is complete. Other than that, we should be all set. Here are some quick notes and comments:

• I added a quick section about installing using pip.
• Related to this, the package should be able to install using pip alone now. Astronomers tend to be a fan of requirement files especially because they sometimes have cluttered environments. That being said, I am a fan of not needing one for installation as well!
• I have added the zenodo tag to our README.
• I cleaned up the functions in models.py and added the docstrings as requested.
• Thank you for pointing out the ci_tests.yml items, I cleaned up the file! I kept the prefix for now with a place holder.
• I love that AstroPy has added the section about imposter syndrome, I believe it was first adopted by MetPy. I think its a challenge that often gets overlooked and one I am well acquainted with so I am proud to have it on our intro!

Thanks again!

[robelgeda]

Hi all, just checking in to see if we are are set with the pre-review stage? If not, we can make further changes!