Skyfield - elegant Astronomy in elegant Python. It's easy!

The Python package Skyfield computes positions for the stars, planets, and satellites in orbit around the Earth using the same underlying code and data as astronomers and rocket scientists. See http://rhodesmill.org/skyfield/ It has been lovingly build by the maintainer of the earlier PyEphem, and you can learn about the philosophy of the package and it's elegant use of python on it's website, and in this PyCon Canada 2013 presentation https://youtu.be/FVEEndIwOSA

I'll take you through the methods, and go into the thought behind them - how to make Skyfield and it's methods as absolutely easy and intuitive to use, and yet provide you with rock-solid math and physics. The only dependency is NumPy, which is pretty much a given for any scientific package.

We'll build the solar system, watch the sun get pushed around by Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, simulate a solar eclipse, and predict when and where to stand to see the full Moon hovering above Taipei 101.