cosxy

Cosxy is a fictional open-source software library designed to facilitate the analysis of cosmological datasets by providing consistent coordinate transformations and data management. The name blends cosmos and XY coordinate notation to emphasize its focus on spatial data and cross-domain workflows. The article presents Cosxy as an illustrative example of how a modular toolkit can support reproducible research in astronomy and cosmology.

Cosxy provides a modular core that handles a generic data model for astronomical observations, simulations, and derived products. It supports coordinate system transformations across common celestial references such as equatorial, galactic, and ecliptic, including time-dependent variants, with caching and validation to minimize pipeline errors. The library includes input/output adapters for standard formats such as FITS and HDF5 and offers a plugin interface for extending formats and algorithms without altering the core code.

Development and governance are described as community-driven, originating from collaboration among researchers and software engineers in the early 2020s. A public beta and subsequent releases were distributed under an open-source license, with contributions managed through a public repository and governance that promotes interoperability and best practices in scientific software.

Use and impact in this fictional context include building end‑to‑end analysis pipelines, visualizing large-scale structure data, and teaching coordinate systems in education. Cosxy is presented as a case study in how clear data models and standardized interfaces can improve reproducibility and collaboration, while illustrating possible future directions such as GPU-accelerated transforms, enhanced time-domain support, and cloud-native deployment.