In this video, called “Why Astronomers Love Python And Why You Should Too“, astronomer and data scientist Jake Vanderplasexplains how the experience of working with open source, especially with the open source language python, completely changed the way how he and others are doing astronomy today.
Instead of keeping data or code to themselves, the embrace the open science way of sharing all information that is important to understand the research they are doing. He explains that this was driven by the positive expierence he had in the open source communtiy of Python, were it is really easy to build upon the work of others. Python is famous for how simple it is to import code from others and share it with the public.
After first starting with explaning what modern astronomy is about and going into details on modern teleskopes, around minute 11 he starts to talk about the importance of data in astronomy.
At minute 15 he starts to discuss why the modular and open access based approach of Python is such a fitting part of science.
And finally, around minute 26 he focusses on the open ethos in science and python and finally leads us to why open science makes it all fit together.
Thanks for that enlightening talk, Jake!
Dear reader, you too can help to make science more open: Either by joining us as reviewer by or by submitting your work to one of our mega journals!
