sbpy: A Python module for small-body planetary astronomy

Abstract

Planetary astronomy - the study of Solar System objects with telescopic observations from the ground or from space - utilizes a wide range of methods that are common in observational astronomy. However, some aspects, including the planning of observations, as well as the analysis and interpretation of the results, require tailored techniques and models that are unique and disparate from those used in most other fields of astronomy. Currently, there is no single open source software package available to support small-body planetary astronomers in their study of asteroids and comets in the same way in which Astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al., 2018, 2013) supports the general astronomy community. sbpy is a community effort to build a Python package for small-body planetary astronomy in the form of an Astropy affiliated package. The goal is to collect and implement well-tested and well-documented code for the scientific study of asteroids and comets, including (but not limited to): • observation planning tools tailored to moving objects; • photometric models for resolved and unresolved observations; • wrappers and tools for astrometry and orbit fitting; • spectroscopy analysis tools and models for reflected solar light and emission from gas; • cometary gas and dust coma simulation and analysis tools; • asteroid thermal models for flux estimation and size/albedo estimation; • image enhancement tools for comet comae and PSF subtraction tools; • lightcurve and shape analysis tools; • access tools for various databases containing orbital and physical data, as well as ephemerides services.