Users Guide

Overview of dysh

dysh is a single-dish radio astronomical data reduction package with emphasis on reducing and analyzing data from the Green Bank Telescope. Our goal in writing dysh was to create a new, rich Python software environment for interaction with GBT spectral line data by observers, post-observation scientists, and GBO staff.

dysh is a toolkit framework designed to not only do standard data reduction but to put power into users hands by letting them develop their own sophisticated algorithms, and to make it straightforward for future developers to add functionality. The package is designed to allow fine-grained access to the spectral data and metadata while enabling the user to also interact with and view the data utilizing simple functions.

We have chosen dysh’s user interfaces to minimize barriers to adoption. These are through the (i)Python shell, Python scripts, Jupyter notebooks (either through the classic Jupyter Notebook interface or JupyterLabs), as well as an interactive display. The iPython and Jupyter Notebook/Lab interfaces are powerful, flexible, and familiar to many in the astronomical community making them the natural choice over a custom-built scripting language. Furthermore, the package is built on astropy, numpy, matplotlib, and pandas with which many astronomers are comfortable.