MPDAF - A Python package for the analysis of VLT/MUSE data

Abstract

MUSE (Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) is an integral-field spectrograph mounted on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and made available to the European community since October 2014. The Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon has developed a dedicated software to help MUSE users analyze the reduced data. In this paper we introduce MPDAF, the MUSE Python Data Analysis Framework, based on several well-known Python libraries (Numpy, Scipy, Matplotlib, Astropy) which offers new tools to manipulate MUSE-specific data. We present different examples showing how this Python package may be useful for MUSE data analysis.