The Project

The SunPy project (also known as the SunPy organization) was founded and defined by this document. Its primary goal is to facilitate and promote the use and development of a community-led, free and open-source solar data-analysis software based on the scientific Python environment.

The organization of a board of directors, a lead developer appointed by the board, community roles and the sunpy and affiliated package developers. Anyone is welcome to participate in the SunPy organization. The purpose of the board is to lead the overall structure and direction of SunPy while the lead developer works with the developer community to implement it.

Members of the development community are too numerous to list here but a list of anyone who contributed code to SunPy is available on Github contributors and for each major release we keep track of who contributed in-between releases.

SunPy Board

Steven Christe

More Info

×

Steven Christe

Dr. Steven Christe is a research astrophysicist in the Solar Physics Laboratory at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. His science interests focus on hard X-ray emission from solar flares and the quiet Sun with particular emphasis on the statistics of small transient bursts such as solar microflares; hard X-ray emission associated with solar radio emission; and the application of hard X-ray focusing optics to solar observations.

Affiliation: NASA GSFC

Github: @ehsteve

Start Date: 17 March 2014

Close

David Pérez-Suárez

More Info

×

David Pérez-Suárez

David Pérez-Suárez is working now as a Research Software Developer at University College London. There he helps researchers to get better science via better software and teaches research software engineering to young scientists. He has studied the behavior of Coronal Bright Points with multi-instrument observations while at Armagh Observatory and participated in few EU virtual observatory projects to understand the heliosphere and the space weather effects on Earth while his jobs at Trinity College Dublin, the Finnish Meteorologica Institute, the South African National Space Agency and the Mullard Space Science Laboratory.

Affiliation: University College London

Github: @dpshelio

Start Date: 17 March 2014

Close

Monica Bobra

More Info

×

Monica Bobra

Stanford University in the W. W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory, where she studies the Sun and space weather as a member of the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory science team. She previously worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where she studied solar flares as a member of two NASA Heliophysics missions called TRACE and Hinode. Monica Bobra received a B.A. in Astronomy from Boston University and a M.S. in Physics from the University of New Hampshire.

Affiliation: Stanford University

Github: @mbobra

Start Date: 14 March 2017

Close

Russell Hewett

More Info

×

Russell Hewett

Russell J. Hewett is a research scientist in computational science and engineering. He has worked in solar physics since 2000 and in addition to his PhD thesis on 3D tomography of the corona, he has spent time at NASA GSFC and Trinity College Dublin working on data processing, visualization, and science software for the RHESSI, SOHO, and STEREO satellite observatories. Russell earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech and a Ph.D. in Computer Science with a focus on Computational Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois and he was a postdoc in Applied Mathematics at MIT. He has extensive experience in scientific software for Python. He is now an assistant Professor of Mathematics at Virginia Tech.

Affiliation: Virginia Tech

Github: @rhewett

Start Date: 17 March 2014

Close

Jack Ireland

More Info

×

Jack Ireland

Jack Ireland is a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center, working on coronal heating, solar flares and space weather. He has worked as a member of the SOHO, TRACE, Hinode and SDO mission teams. He also runs the Helioviewer Project, which designs systems and services that give users everywhere the capability to explore the Sun and inner heliosphere and to give transparent access to the underlying data. Jack received a B.Sc in Mathematics and Physics and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

Affiliation: ADNET Systems, Inc. / NASA GSFC

Github: @wafels

Start Date: 17 March 2014

Close

Kevin Reardon

More Info

×

Kevin Reardon

Kevin Reardon is a staff scientist at the National Solar Observatory in Boulder.

Affiliation: NSO

Github: @kreardon

Start Date: 23 Sep 2015

Close

Sabrina Savage

More Info

×

Sabrina Savage

Sabrina Savage is a solar astrophysicist at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL. She received her Ph.D. in physics from Montana State University, where she began a career in satellite operations, and followed up with a NASA Postdoctoral fellowship at Goddard Space Flight Center studying flare energetics with the hard X-ray RHESSI satellite. She now serves as the US Project Scientist for the Japanese-led Hinode mission and works to develop solar instrumentation for sounding rockets and the International Space Station. Her research interests include observations of reconnection in the solar corona during long duration flaring events coupled with in situ complementary measurements of magnetic storms in the Earth's magnetosphere.

Affiliation: NASA MSFC

Github: @sabrinasavage

Start Date: 17 March 2017

Close

Stuart Mumford

More Info

×

Stuart Mumford

Stuart is the Python developer for the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope Data Centre. He obtained a PhD in Numerical solar physics from Sheffield University in 2016, prior to his PhD he obtained a first class MPhys degree in Physics with Planetary and Space Physics from The University of Wales Aberystwyth, during which he spent 5 months studying at UNIS on Svalbard in the high arctic.

Affiliation: Sheffield University

Github: @cadair

Start Date: 17 March 2014

Close

Tiago Pereira

More Info

×

Tiago Pereira

Tiago Pereira is an Associate Professor at the University of Oslo, at the Rosseland Centre for Solar Physics and the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics. He received his Ph.D. from the Australian National University, working with 3D MHD models of the solar photosphere and spectral line formation. He subsequently was a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at NASA Ames and LMSAL, studying the dynamic chromosphere and helping prepare for the IRIS mission. A member of the IRIS science team, Tiago's research focuses on understanding the solar chromosphere by combining multi-wavelength observations with MHD simulations.

Affiliation: University of Oslo

Github: @tiagopereira

Start Date: 07 August 2019

Close

Bin Chen

More Info

×

Bin Chen

Bin Chen is an Associate Professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, NJ, affiliated with the Department of Physics and the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research. He received his Ph.D. in astronomy from University of Virginia in 2013. Prior to his appointment at NJIT, he was an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. His research interests focus on high-energy aspects of solar flares and coronal mass ejections based on observations at radio, X-ray, and other wavelengths. He has been working on instrumentation, software development, and data analysis for radio facilities including the Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array, Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, and the Atacama Large (sub)Millimeter Array.

Affiliation: New Jersey Institute of Technology

Github: @binchensun

Start Date: 7 August 2019

Close

Community Roles

Lead Developer

Stuart Mumford

More Info

×

Stuart Mumford

Stuart is the Python developer for the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope Data Centre. He obtained a PhD in Numerical solar physics from Sheffield University in 2016, prior to his PhD he obtained a first class MPhys degree in Physics with Planetary and Space Physics from The University of Wales Aberystwyth, during which he spent 5 months studying at UNIS on Svalbard in the high arctic.

Affiliation: Sheffield University

Github: @cadair

Start Date: 17 March 2014

Close

Deputy Lead Developer

Will Barnes

More Info

×

Will Barnes

Will Barnes is a postdoctoral researcher at the Naval Research Laboratory where he studies coronal heating through forward modeling and loop hydrodynamics. Previously, he was a postdoc at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory. In May of 2019, Will completed his PhD in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University under the direction of Stephen Bradshaw. Prior to his PhD, Will received a BS in astrophysics from Baylor University in 2013.

Affiliation: U.S. Naval Research Observatory

Github: @wtbarnes

Start Date: 3 December 2019

Close

Communication and Education Lead

Sophie Murray

More Info

×

Sophie Murray

Sophie Murray is a Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and visiting researcher at Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin, Ireland. Her research interests are focused on better understanding the solar source of space weather events in order to improve predictions of their impact on Earth and she leads a number of international space weather forecasting coordination activities. Sophie completed an MSc at University College London and PhD in solar physics at Trinity College Dublin. She also worked at the Met Office, the UK’s national meteorological service. Sophie is also heavily involved in public engagement and outreach, and is Principle Investigator of the Astronomical Midlands, a Science Foundation Ireland Discover Project engaging rural communities with astronomy.

Affiliation: Trinity College Dublin and Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies

Github: @drsophiemurray

Start Date: 3 December 2019

Close

Summer of Code Administrator

David Pérez-Suárez

More Info

×

David Pérez-Suárez

David Pérez-Suárez is working now as a Research Software Developer at University College London. There he helps researchers to get better science via better software and teaches research software engineering to young scientists. He has studied the behavior of Coronal Bright Points with multi-instrument observations while at Armagh Observatory and participated in few EU virtual observatory projects to understand the heliosphere and the space weather effects on Earth while his jobs at Trinity College Dublin, the Finnish Meteorologica Institute, the South African National Space Agency and the Mullard Space Science Laboratory.

Affiliation: University College London

Github: @dpshelio

Start Date: 17 March 2014

Close

Maintainer List

The following section list the maintainers for the various sub-packages of the core library as well as the documentation maintainers. Each area should have at least one but preferably two people identified. To enable mentorship the two maintainers could include a lead and a deputy or also two co-leads. Some roles are currently not filled. We’d like to encourage members of the community to inquire about volunteering.

Responsibilities of sub-package maintainers include

• Evaluating and soliciting new pull requests which are consistent with the sub-package scope and contribution standards.

• Providing material support for open pull requests to enable merging.

• Maintaining and developing the sub-package roadmap consistent with the roadmap of the overall core package.

• Mentoring the next generation of maintainers and developers.

Responsibilities of documentation maintainers include

• Overseeing and improving content

• Soliciting and implementing improvements and new additions to the content.

• Maintaining and improving the documentation infrastructure.

Sub-package	Name(s)
sunpy.cm	Jack Ireland
sunpy.coordinates	Albert Shih, Stuart Mumford
sunpy.database
sunpy.image	Jack Ireland, Will Barnes
sunpy.instr	Daniel Ryan, Will Barnes
sunpy.io
sunpy.map	Stuart Mumford, Steven Christe
sunpy.net	Stuart Mumford
sunpy.physics	Jack Ireland
sunpy.roi	David Pérez-Suárez
sunpy.sun	Steven Christe
sunpy.time	Laura Hayes, Vishnunarayan K. I.
sunpy.timeseries	Laura Hayes, David Stansby
sunpy.visualization	Daniel Ryan, David Stansby

Documentation Section	Name(s)
documentation/developer
documentation/user	Monica Bobra
documentation/gallery	Monica Bobra, Steven Christe

Affiliated Packages

An affiliated package is a Python package related to Solar Physics that is not part of the SunPy core library, but can be included in the future as part of the SunPy project’s community.

As a community-driven project SunPy thus encourages contributions from a diverse group of people on building such software that has the potential to be a future Affiliated SunPy Package.

Requirements to be satisfied:

• The package must make use of all appropriate features in the core SunPy library, to reduce code duplication and complexity.

• The software must provide documentation that explains the function and use of the package, and this documentation should be of comparable standard to the core SunPy library.

• The code should as far as possible provide an easy to run test suite to verify the correct operation of the package.

• The developers of an affiliated package should engage with the rest of the SunPy community to encourage knowledge and code sharing within the community.

Please look at this SEP to read about our policies surrounding affiliated packages. Please send an email to the mailing list to start a dialogue.

Package Name	Description	Documentation	Maintainer
ndcube	A base package for multi-dimensional (non)contiguous coordinate-aware arrays	ndcube docs	Daniel Ryan
drms	Access HMI, AIA and MDI data with Python	drms docs	Kolja Glogowski
radiospectra	This package aims to provide support for some type of radiospectra on solar physics	radiospectra docs	David Pérez-Suárez
IRISPy	A package for handling data from the IRIS satellite	IRISPy docs	Daniel Ryan

Minutes of SunPy Board Meetings

2019 (3)

Board Meeting 2019-09-20

Board Meeting 2019-08-02

Board Meeting 2019-03-06

2018 (3)

Board Meeting 2018-09-05

Board Meeting 2018-06-19

Board Meeting 2018-02-21

2017 (6)

Board Meeting 2017-09-22

Board Meeting 2017-08-16

Board Meeting 2017-08-02

Board Meeting 2017-04-21

Board Meeting 2017-03-13

Board Meeting 2017-02-17

2016 (2)

Board Meeting 2016-10-26

Board Meeting 2016-05-07

2015 (3)

Board Meeting 2015-12-07

Board Meeting 2015-09-21

Board Meeting 2015-04-13

2014 (7)

Board Meeting 2014-10-17

Board Meeting 2014-09-19

Board Meeting 2014-07-25

Board Meeting 2014-06-09

Board Meeting 2014-05-05

Board Meeting 2014-04-16

Board Meeting 2014-04-07