Russell Owen's Home Page

Russell Owen

I am a systems programmer for the Astronomy Department of the University of Washington. Current tasks include writing data processing software for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and control system software for Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico.

RO Python Package: a package of Python utilities including astronomical math, an interface to the ds9 image viewer, enhanced Tkinter widgets, Tkinter-friendly TCP/IP sockets, an implementation of application preferences, extensive support for sexagesimal (i.e. h:mm:ss) input and output and various useful algorithms.
PyGuide. Find and centroid stars. Works on partial images of stars such as might be found on a slitviewer or coherent fiber bundle. A Python implementation of algorithms developed by Jim Gunn.
TUI: the telescope user interface for the APO 3.5m telescope.
STUI: the telescope user interface for APO 2.5m SDSS telescope.
syncclock: linux interface for Brandywine PCI-SyncClock32 timing card.

Basic information about Mac OS X binary package installers, especially for numpy, scipy and matplotlib.
Astronomical Python: resources for using Python in Astronomy.
Tkinter summary. A quick reference for Tkinter. Includes pointers to other documentation and a fairly extensive section on the use of callback functions.
Tkinter folklore describes various odds and ends that tripped me up or for which I had trouble finding documentation.
Building Matplotlib for MacOS X: instructions for building a universal Mac OS X installer for matplotlib.

I maintain a few unofficial binary installers for MacOS X including PIL (Python Imaging Library) and pygame for Python 2.7 (the official pygame site provides binaries for earlier versions of Python). These are built for the 32-bit Mac python from python.org.

Note: American Country Dances On Line has been shut down as of 2011-06-13.

Russell Owen
University of Washington
PO Box 351580
Seattle, WA 98195-1580
rowen uw edu
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