Firefly Workshop

Tutorial notebooks on using the Firefly Python client (and Jupyter Lab extension) to visualize astronomical data as images, tables, charts, and more!

Setup Workshop Environment

Prerequisites

If you don't have the following installed already,

• miniconda: Install by following the steps at https://docs.anaconda.com/miniconda/install/#quick-command-line-install
• git: Install from https://git-scm.com/downloads

Note: If you're using Windows, it is highly recommended to use Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) for fewer installation headaches.

Setup instructions

1. Clone this repository on your machine:

   git clone https://github.com/Caltech-IPAC/firefly-workshop
   cd firefly-workshop

2. Create Python environment with all the necessary dependencies including Firefly Python client and Jupyter Lab extension:

   conda env create --file environment.yml
   conda activate firefly-py-env

   The name of the new conda environment created above should be displayed next to the terminal prompt:

   (firefly-py-env)
   

3. Set the environment variable for Firefly server to let the Firefly Jupyter Lab extension know which server to talk to from the Python client. We use a public Firefly server - IRSA Viewer:

   export FIREFLY_URL=https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/irsaviewer

4. Open the repository in Jupyter Lab:

   jupyter lab

Reference/Cheatsheet

Once you have completed the setup instructions above, you are ready to visualise your data files from Jupyter Lab in Firefly using the Firefly Python client (firefly_client package).

Go through the Reference notebook present in this repository to learn how to use different capabilities of firefly_client.

The following is a condensed list of all the pages in firefly_client's documentation website that are most relevant for this workshop:

• FireflyClient API reference: You can use "Methods Summary" table to navigate to learn about the function you are interested in and its parameters.
• Displaying Images using Firefly client
• Visualizing Tables and Catalogs using Firefly client
• Visualizing ds9-style Regions using Firefly client
• Making Plots using Firefly client

Exercises

We have 3 notebooks demonstrating how to visualize astronomical data from Python using Firefly in exercises directory:

• Using Firefly to Explore OpenUniverse2024 Data Preview Simulated Roman and Rubin Images
• Using Firefly visualization tools in Python to vet SEDs
• Using Firefly visualization tools to understand the light curves of Solar System objects

Solutions

The solutions of the above exercise notebooks are present at Firefly section in IRSA Tutorials website.