12

Proposal: Astronomy & Astrophysics

Both professional and amateur astronomers/astrophysicists use a lot of software either for image processing or data analysis. So should queries related to those software be allowed here as well, even if software specific SE (Mathematica, Matlab, etc) exist?

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
16

If it's a general question about said piece of software, then probably not - but if it relates to astronomy in some way and there's a good chance the expertise needed to answer it would be on this SE site, I think such questions are perfectly valid.

2
  • 3
    I think if it is a question that asks how to achieve something using a class of software or a specific package, then that should be appropriate to ask in an audience of people that will probably be able to provide the answer. I would accept that asking a general question about photoshop 'because people here use PS and might know the answer' is inappropriate, but asking how to use PS to create useful Flat images for astrophotography should be allowed
    – Jeremy Taylor
    Oct 30, 2012 at 3:53
  • 4
    I think those who are new to astronomy might be interested in asking questions about introductory software they could use to observe the night sky. Or packages which are used for stacking astronomy images. Others which could provide simulation and models. Many are experienced and have used them so they could help people start up. I think this should be allowed. I have spent some time in forums to get such answers when I started up. It was useful.
    – The Byzantine
    Dec 6, 2012 at 2:06
5

I think they should be allowed here. There has been and will always be some overlap in contexts (ie. astrophysics and any specific/general software here). Topics shouldn't be restricted to have some other contexts as well, but the only restriction should be - It must have a relation astrophysics. - This makes this site complete, which is more important than having a question here with less to do with astronomy than to something other. This also lets users of this site gain knowledge or solve problem in case they are unaware of or do not want to go to stackoverflow for any reason. The goal should be to unite and provide a source of information for astrophysics and astronomy. Some looseness in the subject should not be given so much importance.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .