Astropyio

Astropyio is a reference to the input/output (I/O) facilities of the Astropy Project, a Python library for astronomy. Historically, astropyio referred to the collection of I/O utilities designed to ease reading, writing, and converting astronomical data between common formats and in-memory Python objects. The I/O layer aims to provide a uniform interface across formats such as FITS, ASCII/CSV tables, and VOTable, facilitating data exchange within the Python scientific ecosystem.

Over time, the I/O functionality was integrated into the Astropy project under the astropy.io namespace, with dedicated submodules for specific formats (for example, fits and votable). In contemporary usage, references to astropyio are primarily historical, with developers directing users to astropy.io for file handling needs.

Typical capabilities include reading and writing FITS files, including headers and data arrays, as well as table I/O for simple and tabular data. The module provides conversion between on-disk representations and numpy arrays or Astropy Tables, supports time and unit handling, and works with file-like objects. It also emphasizes metadata preservation and compatibility with established astronomical data standards.

Astropyio-like functionality remains central to astronomers' data workflows, reflecting the broader goals of the Astropy Project to standardize scientific software. The related code is open-source and maintained as part of the Astropy ecosystem, with ongoing development and community contributions.

See also Astropy, the astropy.io subpackage, PyFITS, FITS, and VOTable.