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Astropy Astronomy Toolkit

Helps Claude write and debug Astropy code for units, coordinates, FITS I/O, tables, time scales, WCS and cosmology.

Dev & CodingIntermediate★ 33,030⑂ 3,248AI score 8/10Last updated: Aug 9, 2026

What it does

Gives Claude an accurate, up-to-date map of Astropy, the core Python package for astronomy.

  • Units & quantities (astropy.units): conversions, arithmetic with units, spectral/Doppler/parallax equivalencies, logarithmic units
  • Coordinates (astropy.coordinates): ICRS/Galactic/FK5/AltAz transforms, separations, proper motions, catalog matching
  • FITS (astropy.io.fits): HDU access, header editing, multi-extension files, memory mapping, remote/S3 reads
  • Tables (astropy.table): FITS/CSV/HDF5/VOTable I/O, joins, grouping, masking, unit-aware QTable
  • Time (astropy.time): UTC/TAI/TT/TDB scales, JD/MJD formats, sidereal time, barycentric corrections
  • WCS, cosmology, constants, convolution, statistics: pixel↔world transforms, luminosity distance, lookback time, sigma clipping

Per-module reference files keep the main skill lean, and the doc flags Astropy 7.2 behavior plus deprecations removed in 8.0.

Who it's for

  • Astronomers, astrophysics grad students, and observatory data analysts
  • Data scientists handling FITS imagery or source catalogs
  • Developers new to Astropy who want idiomatic patterns (always attach units, use context managers, vectorize)

Example uses

  1. Coordinate work: "Convert this RA/Dec list to Galactic coordinates and compute Alt/Az for a site at lat 40°, lon -120° on 2023-06-15."
  2. Catalog cross-match: "Match catalog1.fits to catalog2.fits within 1 arcsec and write out the matched rows."
  3. Cosmology table: "Using Planck18, tabulate luminosity distance and lookback time for z = 0.1–3 and plot the result."

· · · Install guide · · ·

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 /tmp/scientific-agent-skills && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r /tmp/scientific-agent-skills/skills/astropy ~/.claude/skills/

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

  1. Open a terminal and confirm Claude Code is installed (claude --version).
  2. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills.git
  3. Create the skills directory: mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
  4. Copy just this skill: cp -r scientific-agent-skills/skills/astropy ~/.claude/skills/
  5. Install Astropy in a virtual environment (Python 3.11+ required): uv pip install "astropy==7.2.0", or "astropy[recommended]==7.2.0" for plotting extras.
  6. Restart Claude Code and try a prompt like "Use astropy to convert these ICRS coordinates to Galactic."
  7. Note that object name resolution, site lookups, remote FITS reads and IERS updates require network access — avoid sending sensitive target names or file paths to external services.
View source on GitHub ↗License: MIT