astro py:docs

- Index
- Modules

### Navigation

- next »
- « previous |
- Astropy v0.3 »
- Current status of sub-packages

# Current status of sub-packages

Astropy has benefited from the addition of widely tested legacy code, as well as new development, resulting in variations in stability across sub-packages. This document summarizes the current status of the Astropy sub-packages, so that users understand where they might expect changes in future, and which sub-packages they can safely use for production code.

Note that until version 1.0, even sub-packages considered Mature could undergo some user interface changes as we work to integrate the packages better. Thus, we cannot guarantee complete backward-compatibility between versions at this stage.

The classification is as follows:

| Planned
| Actively developed, be prepared for possible significant changes
| Reasonably stable, no major changes likely
| Mature

The current planned and existing sub-packages are:

Sub-Package |  | Comments
--- | --- | ---
astropy.constants |  | Constants have been changed to `Quantity` objects in v0.2.
astropy.convolution |  | New top-level package in v0.3 (was previously part of `astropy.nddata`). Includes a new framework for kernels in v0.3.
astropy.coordinates |  | New in v0.2, significant API changes in v0.3
astropy.cosmology |  | Incremental improvements since v0.1, but mostly stable API.
astropy.io.ascii |  | Originally developed as `asciitable`, and has maintained a stable API.
astropy.io.fits |  | Originally developed as `pyfits`, and retains an API consistent with the standalone version.
astropy.io.misc |  | The functionality that is currently present is stable, but this sub-package will likely see major additions in future.
astropy.io.votable |  | Originally developed as `vo.table`, and has a stable API.
astropy.modeling |  | New in v0.3
astropy.nddata |  | In development, and does not yet contain much functionality apart from a base class for N-dimensional datasets.
astropy.photometry |  |
astropy.stats |  | Still in development, and does not yet contain much functionality.
astropy.table |  | Incremental improvements since v0.1, but mostly stable API.
astropy.time |  | Incremental improvements since v0.1, but mostly stable API.
astropy.units |  | New in v0.2. Adapted from `pnbody` and integrated into Astropy.
astropy.utils |  | This sub-package contains mostly utilities destined for use in other parts of Astropy, and is not yet stable.
astropy.vo |  | Virtual Observatory service access and validation. Currently, only Simple Cone Search is supported.
astropy.wcs |  | Originally developed as `pywcs`, and has a stable API for now. However, there are plans to generalize the WCS interface to accommodate non-FITS WCS transformations, and this may lead to small changes in the user interface.