solar-wavelength-calibration: Absolute wavelength calibration of Solar spectra

[eigenbrot]

Submitting Author: (@eigenbrot)
All current maintainers: (@krislars, @fraserwatson, @A-Derks)
Package Name: solar-wavelength-calibration
One-Line Description of Package: Library for computing absolute wavelength calibration of Solar spectra.
Repository Link: https://bitbucket.org/dkistdc/solar-wavelength-calibration
Version submitted: 2.0.1
EiC: @crhea93
Editor: @hamogu
Reviewer 1: @johoelken
Reviewer 2: @hpparvi
Archive: TBD
JOSS DOI: TBD
Version accepted: TBD
Date accepted (month/day/year): TBD

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Description

solar-wavelength-calibration is designed to match an observed solar spectrum to a reference solar atlas in order to produce a mapping from raw pixel index to an absolute wavelength value. It supports a combination of Solar and telluric signals (with an optional Doppler offset) and a physically motivated parameterization of spectral gratings that is compatible with the world coordinate system (WCS) encoding standard in FITS files (a common astronomy data format).

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    In general, the audience for this package is Solar Astronomers who have spectral data that need an absolute reference wavelength solution. Absolute wavelength calibration is required for many forms of downstream spectral analysis, e.g., velocity and magnetic field measurements. This package can serve both as a library used in a larger analysis package, or as a stand-alone tool that end-user scientists can use directly on their own data.

  • Are there other Python packages that accomplish the same thing? If so, how does yours differ?
    There are other packages that offer wavelength calibration functionality; in particular, specreduce, atlas-fit, and some astropy tutorials. The primary difference between these packages and solar-wavelength-calibration is that solar-wavelength-calibration is designed for Solar spectra and is tailored specifically to this use case in ways that cannot be replicated with other packages. In particular, the use of a Solar atlas (as opposed to line lists) and the construction of a composite reference from Solar and telluric spectra are features unique to calibrating Solar data. Furthermore, our parameterization of the wavelength solution as motivated by the physical properties of a spectrograph is, while based on the work of others, unique in its implementation.

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[crhea93]

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Editor comments

This package is looking very well documented and thought-out at a first glance! There are a small thing:

• We require a Generative AI disclosure in the README file or as a separate file. It doesn't need to be long, but we believe it is important to enumerate how Generative AI is being used in packages. You can read more about it if you are interested here https://www.pyopensci.org/blog/generative-ai-peer-review-policy.html.

[hamogu]

Hi @eigenbrot ! I'll be acting as editor for this submission and I'm looking for reviewers right now.
I'll do have some ideas of whom to ask, but we have more submissions at PyOpenSci than volunteer editors and reviewers. You might think that's a good problem to have, but unfortunately that means might be slower than we want; sorry!

Anyway, I hope I'll find reviewers soon and then we're on our way.

[hamogu]

Editor response to review:

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Editor comments

I'll update this comment as a I find reviewers.

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[eigenbrot]

Hi @hamogu, thanks for the message and glad to have you on board. I know y'all are super busy and I really appreciate all the time and effort everyone puts in; no worries on any slowness!

[hamogu]

@eigenbrot : Your submission above ticked the "submit to JOSS" box. Where can we find the JOSS paper? It's commonly put into your repro, but I can't find it. As part of our partnership with JOSS, we review the JOSS paper here, too, and when we (PyOpenSci) approve a package and a paper, JOSS will publish it without further content review. That way, you don't have to go through two very similar reviews and the community doesn't have to provide four reviewers. Once your packager and paper has gone successfully through the PyOpensci review, you open a PR to JOSS and reference this issue and then they will automatically accept your package, JOSS will only quickly check the formatting, format of the reference and stuff like that, but not review the content of the paper again.

However, that means that we already need the JOSS paper, so that we can look at it. Instructions for formatting, required content, etc. can be found at: https://joss.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

[eigenbrot]

Hi @hamogu, it's true we are hoping to submit a paper to JOSS, but I didn't realize the actual paper document would also be reviewed as part of the pyOpenSci review. So the unfortunate truth is that the paper doesn't exist yet; I was planning to write it during and after the pyOpenSci review, prior to opening a review with JOSS. I want to make sure any changes that come about from this review are correctly captured in the paper.

Should I uncheck that box? Is there a process for submitting a JOSS paper after a pyOpenSci review that sill leans on the work that has been done by the reviewers here? I'd also be willing to pause/rescind the pyOpenSci review until we've got a paper written. Whichever approach respects and makes the best use of the time of everyone at pyOpenSci would be my preference. Please let me know if you have an opinion or any advice. Thanks!

[hamogu]

@eigenbrot Hang on a day or two. We used to review the paper with the PyOpenSci review, but I just learned that that process is changing and in the future JOSS may take the paper on by itself and only rely on us to look at the code. You might just be ahead of us!

I'll get back to you as soon as I hear back from our editor-in-chief what the details are and what exactly is changing between us and JOSS.