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Astropy Astronomy Workflow Skill

Guides Claude to write correct Astropy code for units, coordinate transforms, FITS I/O, tables, time scales, WCS, and cosmology.

Dev & CodingIntermediate41,4853,824AI score 9/10Last updated: Aug 31, 2026

What it does

A focused reference that helps Claude implement and debug astronomy code with Astropy.

  • astropy.units: quantities, conversions, equivalencies (spectral, parallax), logarithmic units
  • astropy.coordinates: ICRS/Galactic/FK5/AltAz transforms, separations, catalog cross-matching
  • astropy.io.fits: image and table FITS reads/writes, header edits, memory-mapping large files
  • astropy.table: catalog I/O, filtering, joins, grouping, unit-aware QTable columns
  • astropy.time: UTC/TAI/TT/TDB scales, JD/MJD formats, light-travel-time corrections
  • astropy.wcs and cosmology: pixel↔world transforms, luminosity distance, lookback time

It also documents pinned installation for Astropy 7.2, APIs removed in 8.0, recently deprecated patterns, and which calls hit the network — so generated code stays current and avoids surprise external requests.

Who it's for

  • Astronomers and astrophysics grad students analyzing observational or simulation data in Python
  • Data engineers handling FITS files and astronomical catalogs
  • Developers automating observing plans (altitude/azimuth, sidereal time)

Examples

  1. "Convert this coordinate list to Galactic and compute Alt/Az for my observatory tonight" → SkyCoord + AltAz frame code
  2. "Cross-match two FITS catalogs within 1 arcsec" → match_to_catalog_sky plus separation filtering
  3. "Give luminosity distance and lookback time at z=1.5 with Planck18" → an astropy.cosmology script

· · · Install guide · · ·

Try it now, no install

Paste this into Claude to use the skill without installing anything.

Read the instructions in this file and follow them to help me:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills/HEAD/skills/astropy/SKILL.md

What I want: (describe your task here)

If Claude can't open the link, open it yourself and paste the contents instead.

If it works for you, download the ZIP below and install it. Then it runs on its own — no pasting each time.

Install in the Claude app (no terminal)
  1. Download the ZIP with the button below.
  2. In Claude, open Settings → Capabilities and turn on 'Code execution and file creation'. (one time)
  3. Go to Customize → Skills → + → 'Upload a skill' and upload the ZIP.
Download ZIP
Install in Claude Code

Let Claude do it — paste this into Claude Code

Install the skill I found on Claude Skill Mart.
Copy the skills/astropy folder from the GitHub repo K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills into my ~/.claude/skills/astropy/.
When it's done, tell me in one line what this skill can do.

Install with a command instead

git clone https://github.com/K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills.git && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r scientific-agent-skills/skills/astropy ~/.claude/skills/

This is a third-party skill. Check the source repository before installing.

  1. Open a terminal.
  2. Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills.git
  3. Create the skills folder: mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
  4. Copy the skill: cp -r scientific-agent-skills/skills/astropy ~/.claude/skills/
  5. Verify the references/ directory with its .md files came along.
  6. Install the library: uv pip install "astropy[recommended]==7.2.0" (Python 3.11+ required).
  7. Restart Claude Code and try a prompt like "write astropy code to transform these coordinates to Galactic".