astropy

A Python toolkit for astronomy and astrophysics calculations and data processing. It handles physical units, sky coordinates, FITS files, tables, precise times, images, and cosmology.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to analyze telescope data, convert celestial coordinates and units, process FITS images and tables, match star catalogs, and calculate cosmological quantities.
Why use it?
It prevents common mistakes when converting units, transforming coordinates, handling astronomical times, or reading research data files.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/k-dense-ai/scientific-agent-skills/astropy
Any agent
npx skills add K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills --skill astropy
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 56 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,493 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00056 $0.03493
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.01747
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00699
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00349

Measured yesterday against content hash ccfab5725b3c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

astropy scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

Copies of this mod

2 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

  • astropy — 100% identical, 4 lines differ
  • astropy — 100% identical, 4 lines differ
skills/astropy/SKILL.md · 354 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 354 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Astropy

Overview

Astropy is the core Python package for astronomy, providing essential functionality for astronomical research and data analysis. Use astropy for coordinate transformations, unit and quantity calculations, FITS file operations, cosmological calculations, precise time handling, tabular data manipulation, and astronomical image processing.

When to Use This Skill

Use astropy when tasks involve:

  • Converting between celestial coordinate systems (ICRS, Galactic, FK5, AltAz, etc.)
  • Working with physical units and quantities (converting Jy to mJy, parsecs to km, etc.)
  • Reading, writing, or manipulating FITS files (images or tables)
  • Cosmological calculations (luminosity distance, lookback time, Hubble parameter)
  • Precise time handling with different time scales (UTC, TAI, TT, TDB) and formats (JD, MJD, ISO)
  • Table operations (reading catalogs, cross-matching, filtering, joining)
  • WCS transformations between pixel and world coordinates
  • Astronomical constants and calculations

Quick Start

import astropy.units as u
from astropy.coordinates import SkyCoord
from astropy.time import Time
from astropy.io import fits
from astropy.table import Table
from astropy.cosmology import Planck18

# Units and quantities
distance = 100 * u.pc
distance_km = distance.to(u.km)

# Coordinates
coord = SkyCoord(ra=10.5*u.degree, dec=41.2*u.degree, frame='icrs')
coord_galactic = coord.galactic

# Time
t = Time('2023-01-15 12:30:00')
jd = t.jd  # Julian Date

# FITS files
data = fits.getdata('image.fits')
header = fits.getheader('image.fits')

# Tables
table = Table.read('catalog.fits')

# Cosmology
d_L = Planck18.luminosity_distance(z=1.0)

Core Capabilities

1. Units and Quantities (astropy.units)

Handle physical quantities with units, perform unit conversions, and ensure dimensional consistency in calculations.

Key operations:

  • Create quantities by multiplying values with units
  • Convert between units using .to() method
  • Perform arithmetic with automatic unit handling
  • Use equivalencies for domain-specific conversions (spectral, doppler, parallax)
  • Work with logarithmic units (magnitudes, decibels)

Read the full file on GitHub · 354 lines

Files

What ships with it

7 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 354 lines · 56 tokens per session scan A ccfab5725b3c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

astropy is a skill published in the GitHub repository K-Dense-AI/scientific-agent-skills (40,390 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 56 tokens to every session and 3,493 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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