HoloViews is yet another Python visualization library, but it has a different approach:

With HoloViews, instead of building a plot using direct calls to a plotting library, you first describe your data with a small amount of crucial semantic information required to make it visualizable, then you specify additional metadata as needed to determine more detailed aspects of your visualization. This approach provides immediate, automatic visualization that can be effortlessly requested at any time as your data evolves, rendered automatically by one of the supported plotting libraries (such as Bokeh or Matplotlib).

It can produce a variety of visualizations — check out its gallery to see more examples.

iTerm2 is a macOS terminal emulator with a lot of extra features. In particular, it has a simple protocol for displaying images inline. It comes with a program imgcat that will display common image formats such as PNG, JPEG, GIF, etc. Most of the images I deal with are FITS, though. I wrote fitscat to be a handy utility to display FITS images, as well as to print basic information about the FITS file such as a listing of extensions or an extension header.

For example, fitscat can display an image in an extension, as seen below:

There are options to specify a minimum and maximum value for scaling, as well as to use a simple filter such square root.

Also, fitscat can also print basic information about a FITS file, such as a listing of extensions:

CoMP$ fitscat --list 20150624.170419.comp.1074.iqu.5.fts
Filename: 20150624.170419.comp.1074.iqu.5.fts
No. Name Ver Type Cards Dimensions Format
0 PRIMARY 1 PrimaryHDU 67 ()
1 I, 1074.38 1 ImageHDU 33 (620, 620) float32
2 I, 1074.50 1 ImageHDU 33 (620, 620) float32
3 I, 1074.62 1 ImageHDU 33 (620, 620) float32
4 I, 1074.74 1 ImageHDU 33 (620, 620) float32
5 I, 1074.86 1 ImageHDU 33 (620, 620) float32
6 Q, 1074.38 1 ImageHDU 33 (620, 620) float32
7 Q, 1074.50 1 ImageHDU 33 (620, 620) float32
8 Q, 1074.62 1 ImageHDU 33 (620, 620) float32
9 Q, 1074.74 1 ImageHDU 33 (620, 620) float32
10 Q, 1074.86 1 ImageHDU 33 (620, 620) float32
11 U, 1074.38 1 ImageHDU 33 (620, 620) float32
12 U, 1074.50 1 ImageHDU 33 (620, 620) float32
13 U, 1074.62 1 ImageHDU 33 (620, 620) float32
14 U, 1074.74 1 ImageHDU 33 (620, 620) float32
15 U, 1074.86 1 ImageHDU 33 (620, 620) float32

Or display a header:

CoMP$ fitscat --header -e 3 20150624.170419.comp.1074.iqu.5.fts
XTENSION= 'IMAGE ' /extension type
BITPIX = -32 /bits per data value
NAXIS = 2 /number of axes
NAXIS1 = 620 /
NAXIS2 = 620 /
PCOUNT = 0 /
GCOUNT = 1 /
EXTNAME = 'I, 1074.62' /
WAVELENG= 1074.620 / WAVELENGTH OF OBS (NM)
POLSTATE= 'I ' / POLARIZATION STATE
EXPOSURE= 250.00 / EXPOSURE TIME (MILLISEC)
NAVERAGE= 16 / Number of images averaged together
FILTER = 1 / FILTER WHEEL POSITION (1-8)
DATATYPE= 'DATA' / DATA, DARK OR FLAT
LCVR1TMP= 29.639999 / DEGREES CELSIUS
LCVR2TMP= 33.429001 /
LCVR3TMP= 33.715000 /
LCVR4TMP= 33.738998 /
LCVR5TMP= 33.618999 /
LCVR6TMP= 28.847000 /
NDFILTER= 8 / ND 1=.1, 2=.3, 3=.5, 4=1, 5=2, 6=3, 7=4, 8=cle
BACKGRND= 13.154 / Median of masked line center background
BODYTEMP= 34.023 / TEMPERATURE OF FILTER BODY ©
BASETEMP= 33.599 / BASE PLATE TEMP ©
RACKTEMP= 25.012 / COMPUTER RACK AMBIENT AIR TEMP ©
OPTRTEMP= 33.306 / OPTICAL RAIL TEMP ©
DEMULT = 1 / 1=DEMULTIPLEXED, 0=NOT DEMULTIPLEXED
FILTTEMP= 35.000 / ILX FILTER TEMPERATURE ©
FLATFILE= '20150624.070023.FTS' / Name of flat field file
INHERIT = T /
DISPMIN = 0.00 / Minimum data value
DISPMAX = 5.00 / Maximum data value
DISPEXP = 0.50 / Exponent value for scaling

The full interface of fitscat is shown below:

usage: fitscat [-h] [--min MIN] [--max MAX] [--debug] [-d] [--resize-factor RESIZE_FACTOR] [-l]
               [-r] [-e EXTEN_NO] [-f FILTER] [-s SLICE] [--validate]
               filename

fitscat - a FITS query/display program

positional arguments:
  filename              FITS file to query

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --min MIN             min for scaling
  --max MAX             max for scaling
  --debug               set to debug
  -d, --display         set to display
  --resize-factor RESIZE_FACTOR
                        resize by factor
  -l, --list            set to list HDUs
  -r, --header          set to display header
  -e EXTEN_NO, --exten_no EXTEN_NO
                        specify extension
  -f FILTER, --filter FILTER
                        specify filter (default: none)
  -s SLICE, --slice SLICE
                        specify slice of data array to display
  --validate            check keywords against FITS standard

Source code for the Python script is available on GitHub. The script is compatible with Python 2 and 3, but requires standard scientific Python packages AstroPy, NumPy, and PIL.

Travis Oliphant, creator of NumPy the array package for Python, wrote a analog to the Zen of Python for NumPy:

Strided is better than scattered
Contiguous is better than strided
Descriptive is better than imperative (use data-types)
Array-oriented is often better than object-oriented
Broadcasting is a great idea -- use where possible
Vectorized is better than an explicit loop
Unless it’s complicated --- then use numexpr, weave, or Cython
Think in higher dimensions

I tried something for IDL last year.

Awesome Python:

A curated list of awesome Python frameworks, libraries, software and resources.

Worth checking out when looking for an existing solution.

Great post examining some of the reasons why the FFT algorithm is so fast compared to a naive implementation

The goal of this post is to dive into the Cooley-Tukey FFT algorithm, explaining the symmetries that lead to it, and to show some straightforward Python implementations putting the theory into practice. My hope is that this exploration will give data scientists like myself a more complete picture of what’s going on in the background of the algorithms we use.

A nice list of resources for doing remote sensing in Python, especially if you already know IDL.

I’ve found this translation guide for writing and understanding Python code quite useful. I think it should work if you are familiar with Python and wanting to read/write IDL code also.

Python Unlocked:

Python is a versatile programming language that can be used for a wide range of technical tasks — computation, statistics, data analysis, game development, and more. Though Python is easy to learn, its range of features means there are many aspects of it that even experienced Python developers don’t know about. Even if you’re confident with the basics, its logic and syntax, by digging deeper you can work much more effectively with Python – and get more from the language.

Python Unlocked walks you through the most effective techniques and best practices for high performance Python programming – showing you how to make the most of the Python language.

I find myself reading more about best practices, especially in Python.

If you are interested, promo code PYTUNL30 will get you 30% off the ebook until Feb 20.

One of the major features of IDL 8.5 is the two-way bridge between IDL and Python. This allows Python functionality to be accessed from IDL (Python has a lot of libraries for things that fall outside of the standard scientific routines found in IDL) as well as accessing IDL functionality from Python (call legacy IDL code).

The IDL-Python bridge works with either Python 2 or 3 (whew, I’m still on Python 2!).

It is possible to use any of the vast array of libraries available for Python from IDL. For example, we can use one of the interpolation methods in SciPy just by importing it:

IDL> interpol = python.import('scipy.interpolate')

Now, create some data in IDL to interpolate:

IDL> lat = randomu(seed, 20) + 40.0
IDL> lon = randomu(seed, 20) - 100.0
IDL> values = randomu(seed, 20)

Now, create the interpolation function with those values:

IDL> rbfi = interpol->Rbf(lat, lon, values)

Finally, call the interpolation routine on with the locations we need values for:

IDL> print, rbfi([40.5], [-99.5])
0.37419477

To make this side of the bridge even easier from the IDL command line, there is a special Python mode that can be entered simply by entering >>>:

IDL> >>>
>>> import numpy
>>>
IDL>

Enter a blank line to get back to IDL.

From Python, use the idlpy package access IDL:

>>> from idlpy import IDL
>>> x = IDL.findgen(10)
>>> print x
[ 0. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.]

The Python bridge docs are online, check them out for more details.

One of the most exciting aspects of the IDL-Python bridge is the IDL Jupyter notebook kernel, which I will discuss next week.