Install these astronomy-specific python packages

There are several packages used in this research. The steps below walk you through install them. The instructions below should work for all platforms...if you run into problems please let us know!

Make an "environment" just for astro research

Doing this creates a "virtual" copy of your python installation. If something goes wrong with that copy or it gets messed up or the setup changes a lot it is easy to delete the copy and start fresh.

To make the environment copy/paste this into your terminal and hit Enter to run it. You will be asked to confirm that you want to create the environment:

mamba create -n astro_research python=3.11

You only need to make the environment once, but you will need activate it every time you use the environment.

Activate your new environment

Type this in the terminal and push Enter to activate the environment (i.e. make it the Python you are using):

mamba activate astro_research

Install astropy, its affiliated projects, and more

Copy and paste the long line below into your terminal and press enter to run it. After a couple of minutes you should get a prompt asking you to confirm that you want to install this stuff.

mamba install -c conda-forge astropy=5 astroquery ccdproc ginga ipywidgets bottleneck photutils matplotlib pandas gatspy pyyaml astrowidgets jupyterlab=3 ipympl reducer pydantic=1 ipyautoui batman-package