# Introduction

Welcome to the AST library. If you are writing software for astronomy and need to use celestial coordinates (e.g. RA and Dec), spectral coordinates (e.g. wavelength, frequency, etc.), or other coordinate system information, then this library should be of interest. It provides solutions for most of the problems you will meet and allows you to write robust and flexible software. It is able to read and write WCS information in a variety of formats, including FITS-WCShttp://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/fits_wcs.html.

Subsections

- What Problems Does AST Tackle?
- Other Design Objectives
- What Does “AST” Stand For?