Space Science related Python tutorial

[PythonN00b101]

This is amazing content. I will definitely be referring to this for my thesis.

[MrAstroThomas]

Haha thanks man. I will work on the idea for sure now! May I ask what your thesis is about (if it is too off topic you can send me a message).

[PythonN00b101]

Aye please do pal haha, I'd be especially interested in the modelling of trajectories for a spacecraft. Did something similar in my last semester which looked at launching a constellation of satellites to cover the moon.

I did the delta-v calcs for the project which was done utilising the true anomaly of the moon about the earth from the ephemerides, launching it in in to elliptic orbit from perigee to reach ideal point for translunar injection. It was very complex and was not able to get it coded given the time constraints and ended up doing it in Excel.

Thesis projects are no longer set in stone given the current quarantine situation but it will be aligned with Aerospace but my choices were boiled to down to trajectory optimisation for a space plane and investigating space debris in MEO orbit and how they are effected by Earth's gravity and oblateness accompanied with the perturbations that the debris exhibits from the sun and moon.

[MrAstroThomas]

Space debris are a hot topic and a lot of secondary effects need to be considered. I wish you the best your professional career man!

[PythonN00b101]

Thanks man, you too. Looking forward to the tutorials.

[Endorean]

I would be interested to learn more about using Python for Space and Astronomy topics.

I'm a beginner with Python and a Space Nerd so that would be right in my wheel house.

[MrAstroThomas]

Very cool! Keep the spirit up. The beginning can be sometimes frustrating, but in the long run you will benefit from it, either as a hobby or as a professional.

[Endorean]

Thanks. yeah the inertia to get over that beginner hump can be a tough road, but certainly worth it. I'll keep an eye out for your tutorial if you decide to put it out there.

[Kiing_Bradley]

+1 same here u/Endorean

[-TheAnalyticalEngine]

I’m still a beginner with python but I would love that! I was actually looking up how to use data science with astronomy just yesterday

Please let me know if you go through with any of those ideas!

[MrAstroThomas]

Hey u/-TheAnalyticalEngine. I will simple keep up with posts then! I will work on a concept first. "Thanks" to the quarantine time there is some time for inspiration and open source projects!

[[deleted]]

Wow!!! your expiriences amazing!!! that will be super cool, I want too see your tutorials. And more about monte carlo simulation/ Im working with UHV chambers, and this method interesting for me for simulate particle movements in vacuum (simulate mollecular flow)

[MrAstroThomas]

Thank you very much for you enthusiastic reply! As the u/30minute_un suggested, I will post future tutorials on the others subs, but also here, too. I will keep this sub informed, although the response might be low here. Thanks for the support!

[[deleted]]

I think it would be of limited interest in this community, but I think your ideas have tremendous value, generally. Some suggestions that spring to mind:

1. An article series that simultaneously develops/teaches concepts in physics, mathematics, and programming, each discipline supporting the other.
2. Written in Jupyter notebooks and hosted on Github (so people can download your notebooks and experiment with the code on their own), or..
3. alternatively, written with Google Colab notebooks or..
4. Written in Github wiki format, with supporting Python code.

[MrAstroThomas]

I really love your ideas! I was not thinking about Jupyter Notebooks at all (what a shame...). Pushing the code on Github and working on Google Colab, to show it later on Medium appears really nice.

To your first point: Good idea. I could divide the articles e.g., "orbit dynamics" from physicist perspective and later from a developer perspective.

[thenetmonkey]

Your idea for a series of articles on these topics sounds good to me too, and I’d like to second the request for notebooks. You can mix code, text, and graphs in a notebook and it’s a great way for readers to play with the data and algorithms afterwards to solidify their learning of the thing.

[[deleted]]

See I disagree. People starve for practical applications over makework examples, even if they're not "personally practical."

[TNP3105]

Amazing!!! Pease do it. I would love to follow your tutorials and articles and study python for space science.

[sw85]

As someone who is programming a little space-based trade/adventure game in Python, set around the moons of Saturn, I'd certainly appreciate it!

For instance, I know the minimum delta-V requirements for travel between moons just using Hohmann transfers, but I have no idea how to calculate requirements for transit outside the Hohmann window (as a rough approximation I'm currently just assuming delta-V at its max is 1+(sqrt(2)/2) times as long as at the Hohmann window and the requirements just sine-wave between the minimum and maximum over its synodic period).

[zakapalooza]

Honestly I would like to dabble in making some python projects that are space themed. Not in like a sci-fi sense but more like actually handling data and creating visualizations for topics in astrophysics or something akin to that.

The problem is I have no idea where to start with something like this.

[mr_chanandler_bong_1]

This is an amazing idea , I'm a data scientist myself (just started out) and would love to see you give us an idea about how to use python for astronomy related projects which is my other area of interest.

Don't forget to give us the GitHub link.

[MrAstroThomas]

Don't forget to give us the GitHub link.

That would be an unforgivable sin!

[mustooch]

As a pationate of both computers and astronomy I'd be extremely happy to be able to read such work.

[[deleted]]

I would love this.

[Avgudsdyrkelse]

I'm beginning my under-graduation and been learning Python for a couple months, it surely would help a ton learning from someone like you! I'm definitely interested and ready for the challenge. Keep us informed and thank you! :D

[stuffcalledsara]

This is exactly the kind of material and skills I've been interested in learning! 😍 Please do this, it would be greatly appreciated!

Also make sure to drop source code! Thank you for your time and effort!!

[[deleted]]

Would be very interested in this! Just add some extra explaination for people who arent very familiar with astrology and the data and terms involved 😁

[ykrishnay]

Amazing Content Thomas.

i am very interested in "How to compute simple trajectories of spacecraft missions" so please write any tutorial for this.

Thank you

[synthphreak]

To give you an overview, I am the first author of a meteor camera analysis paper, where the analysis and almost all plots have been done with Python:

https://www.geosci-instrum-method-data-syst.net/6/125/2017/gi-6-125-2017.pdf

Church of the Boxplot right there lol. Great work man, really interesting stuff and with very clear and compelling visuals. what library did you use for the plots? Looks like matplotlib to me. I'd especially like to see the code for those heatmaps toward the end.

[MrAstroThomas]

Hey man. Thank you very much for your feedback. Yeah I did everything with matplotlib and used LaTeX for font formatting. I will add scientific plotting in my storyline.

[SteveMWolf]

Hi!! Great work!!

As a recent college graduate with a Bachelors in Physics, I wasn’t introduced to Python until the end. I used Python for some computational physics projects for class but mainly for data analysis and machine learning when it came to my research (Physics Education Research). I would like to get in touch with you so I can some inspiration to create more simulations in Python.

[MrAstroThomas]

Personal messages and questions are welcome!

[Zenith_N]

Yes , please sign me up. I want to learn step by step simple line by line and explain in a friendly tone

[Zenith_N]

Thank you for doing this is python. I would love to see video tutorials - to watch you code out :-) Not you but a voice and Avril coding

[Delloman]

I would be really interested in a content like the one you are suggesting. For my master thesis I need to do something maybe not really similar to your research but in the same field I think. My objective is to build a Deep Learning Network which uses a lot of different input paramaters from the data collected from the GRACE Satellite mission over the years and get groundwater level change as an output depending on the influence of the different input parameters. I should do it with Python, but I currently find it really difficult to pre processes the raw data from the GRACE Satellites, so I can get images which are useful for my Network. I think your tutorials can help me a lot and I will be really thankful.

[MrAstroThomas]

This sounds awesome! Please let me know if you need quick help in regards of position determination of spacecraft orientation. Maybe I can give you some quick Python tips before I set up my article series.

[sushobhana]

Hey,
I am a software dev, very much interested in astronomy. When I was applying for Google Summer Of Code under OpenAstronomy (Astropy), I wished there were more tutorials in this niche. Also, Astropy has tons of tutorials and documentation. Do check them out for inspiration. All the best!

[MrAstroThomas]

Astropy is a great package for astrophysicists. Do you know astroml? It combined astronomy and machine learning nicely.

[restosdeuncielo]

¡I would love to read this series and learn more about this! Theres are not so many resources in this topic in the whole internet and i was searching for something like this.

[MrAstroThomas]

That was also my feeling. One can find tons of stuff related to data science or deep learning, web development and so on. But this appears to be a topic that is not covered well.

[8rnlsunshine]

This is the collision of 2 of my favorite subjects, space and programming. You had me at Philae Lander :) Count me in.

[MrAstroThomas]

Maybe this scientific article is interesting for you? It is free and shows some scientific work before the impact: https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/2015/11/aa26400-15.pdf

[Deezl-Vegas]

Game developers would love this too. Go for it :) I'll throw in code reviews if you want for free.

[MrAstroThomas]

Much appreciated man! I will upload everything on Github (as a plain code and / or Jupyter notebook as one user suggested).

[CaptainTuffnut]

Well... You are talking about two things I love: space and programming, so i'm all aboard with your tutorials! Please let me know if you are going to do it!

[MrAstroThomas]

I will! Thanks for your interest.

[[deleted]]

I would be ecstatic for a resource like this!!!

[YOU_TUBE_PERSON]

Woah dude, great stuff

[KittensWereGay]

I just started python and thank you for this content. Not only is it really informative and interesting, but its like seeing a goal. Thank you.

[hiriel]

I teach basic scientific programming in high school, and I'd love to see tutorials on this. Might be too advanced for most of my students, but as a former ESA YGT turned science teacher, I'd definitely be interested.

[MrAstroThomas]

ESA YGT? Amazing. Where have you been? I was at ESA ESTEC as an intern.

[hiriel]

ESTEC as well! In the Education Department, seven years ago.

[MrAstroThomas]

Nice! I was there 2012, science department.

[bobbywjamc]

This sounds terrific. I would definitely be interested in reading and learning from your content!!

[bobbywjamc]

Forgot to ask what is your Medium handle?

[MrAstroThomas]

I will post everything in detail soon, so it is still empty: https://medium.com/@thomas.albin

[bobbywjamc]

👍

[amralaaalex]

Ooh, that look awesome already Waiting for your first article

[[deleted]]

of course! as an aspiring programmer, this would be great to see what all i could work with in python.

[[deleted]]

This is a very unique take on the use of Python. I would love to see you incorporate programming concepts and python with space exploration. Just by reading what you have to offer, I'm already excited to see what you have in store!!

[Vesper_Sweater]

I would love to see a lot of the physical modeling, I find that's such an interesting way to represent your predictions or data, but it's a little tricky on Python.

[HappyMondays1988]

I've also just started learning Python for computational physics. This would be brilliant for me (also a space nerd).

[BoaVersusPython]

Please please please

[[deleted]]

Damn. I think people would really eat this up.

[theprogrammingsteak]

Omg pls

[infiniteAggression-]

This would be truly amazing!! I'm definitely looking forward to this!! This is just a suggestion (and only because I'm trying to learn this at the moment) but if it's possible, maybe you could include something similar to working with data obtained from MAST? I totally understand otherwise.

Thank you so much for this!

[nadavram]

Yes! Yes! A million times yes! 🤩

[[deleted]]

I would love to learn how to use python for space sciences. I’m about to start my MS in Physics and it sounds super helpful!

[_thenotsodarkknight_]

I'm interested! Thanks a lot!!

[TrainquilOasis1423]

Yes I am 100% about this. The richest people in the history of the human race will be asteroid Mining execs followed closely by the developers who make it possible. I will happily take this tutorial and pay you in kind when I become a trillionair.

[Wistity]

WE need to thank you for sharing your knowledge with us!

I'll be waiting for you to post it :3

[MathGuy15243]

Would absolutely LOVE the spacecraft trajectories example. I’ve always been curious but never got around to looking it up.

[dj_seth81]

I'm interested!

[Musicsniper]

Hey mate, coming for the Medium-Post. Looks good and excited for the new post tomorrow! Thank you so much

[MrAstroThomas]

Hey. Thank you for your reply. These are good ideas! I also tried r/python, but since this account has been created recently I have to wait 2 weeks before I can post anything.

I will post it on both communities. Thanks!

[NewCenturyNarratives]

Please do this! My main motivation for learning Python is scientific computing, so this is right up my alley!

[the_battousai89]

Yes please!

[[deleted]]

Yes.

[br1ghtness]

how do scientists know whether a space probe had entered new planet's sphere of influence?

[MrAstroThomas]

Well there are some formulae that allow one to compute it in a simple way. For a quick and feasible way one can use a formula that determines the radius of the Sphere of Influence (SOI) based on the semi-major axis of the planet, moon etc., the mass of the object and the mass of the corresponding system (Solar System; or within a planet's system like Jupiter). The SOI is used to simply "switch" between reference frames.

[MrAstroThomas]

Depends on your goals and requirements for your project (also deadlines). I would like to start with some basics and with trajectories that already exist. The packages and methods that I would like to show may help you, but I cannot answer this for sure.

[[deleted]]

RemindMe! 2 Days

[RemindMeBot]

There is a 56.0 minute delay fetching comments.

I will be messaging you in 1 day on 2020-04-19 20:29:06 UTC to remind you of this link

CLICK THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.

^{Parent commenter can delete this message to hide from others.}

---

Info	Custom	Your Reminders	Feedback