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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 & CodingIntermediate★ 41,485⑂ 3,824AI 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 AI 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".
View source on GitHub ↗License: MIT