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As a rule, work in the field of observational astronomy and astrophysics requires knowledge of such programming languages as: C/C++ and the principles of OOP, MPI, CUDA. Sometimes additional mathematical libraries are used (alglib, gsl, numpy, sympy).

But I would like to know something else. I came across a publication in which astronomical (astrophysical) work is presented in the form of the following block:

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This structure corresponds to the following 5 sections:

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There are two key points:

  1. The lists of recommended programming languages do not show what specific tasks from the field of astronomy and astrophysics can be solved with their help.
  2. An indicative list of tasks usually solved in the field of astronomy and astrophysics does not show which programming languages and how they are solved.

Part of this can be circumvented by studying specially designed astronomical and astrophysical software packages and the problems they solve. Each astronomical and astrophysical problem thus has its own set and type of input and output data, as well as the structure and solution algorithm. Therefore, for this or that type of task, its own programming language (or their combination) is suitable. To overcome the contradiction and ease the entry threshold, it would be desirable to compare each of the above 5 sections with programming languages and specific basic tasks that can be solved with their help.

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    $\begingroup$ I understand, yet I believe in this form it will remain an opinion-based survey - a format not well suited and discouraged for this site as these kind of questions don't have a definitive answer. Don't underestimate how much and often python is meanwhile used - the entry barrier is much lower, so it gained quite high popularity, unless really heavy number crunching or much faster speed is needed $\endgroup$
    – planetmaker
    Commented Jul 6, 2023 at 6:57
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    $\begingroup$ I work in the "field of observational astronomy and astrophysics". Whilst I used to use C and GSL, I now exclusively use Python. The other stuff you are talking about is mainly used in theoretical calculations. $\endgroup$
    – ProfRob
    Commented Jul 6, 2023 at 7:53
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    $\begingroup$ This is then just a "list question". $\endgroup$
    – ProfRob
    Commented Jul 6, 2023 at 8:22
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    $\begingroup$ >>The fact is that often an astrophysicist is engaged in some narrow section of physics, studying an astrophysical object or phenomenon. It is quite the opposite. Even when studying a single type of object, a wide range of subdisciplines of physics have to be employed to understand this object. $\endgroup$
    – AtmosphericPrisonEscape
    Commented Jul 6, 2023 at 13:21
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    $\begingroup$ One project I have been working on is VSOP87 (computing the positions of the planets) in a mutlitude of programming languages. github.com/gmiller123456/vsop87-multilang $\endgroup$
    – Greg Miller
    Commented Jul 6, 2023 at 16:45

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