I'm applying for GSoC 2026 with OpenAstronomy to work on "Hardening Astropy's Core Stability" under mentors neutrinoceros, astrofrog, and nstarman.
What is Astropy?
Astropy is the core Python library for astronomy. It powers spectral analysis, coordinate transforms, time parsing, and cosmological calculations used by researchers worldwide.
The Problem
Astropy has C and Cython extensions that handle performance-critical operations. These are currently tested only indirectly through the public Python API. A bug in the compiled layer can sit undetected for a long time. My project aims to build a direct, low-level test suite for these extensions.
What I've Done So Far
I've already contributed 12 PRs to Astropy, with 8 merged, including:
- Found and fixed a missing
goto failinparse_times.c - Added direct tests for the
scalar_inv_efuncsCython extension - Fixed bugs in stats, units, table, and time subpackages
What's Next
During GSoC I'll extend this test suite to cover all major C/Cython extensions across time, stats, cosmology, coordinates, table, and wcs subpackages — making Astropy's compiled layer independently testable for the first time.
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