GSoC 2020: The Start of my summer with SunPy
![Group of youngsters looking at Planets through Binoculars](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*KiNZL-dSwxO573jg3EF3Og.jpeg)
The time I am writing this, the temperature has already shot up to 45 degree Celsius; clearly, Sun is usually unkind to me in the city of Vadodara, India. Everything was great, I was chilling out at my Campus IIT Mandi until the Corona thing happened. It changed my google search results for “Corona” from this …
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*3Y4pwOLqZTZfpojp.jpg)
To this :/
![CoronaVirus Image](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/273/1*aWiQ-3qCe-LDecfb7iOtsA.png)
Background
Going back in time to my school days, I developed a great interest in Astronomy. I enjoyed Planetarium trips, national competitions; even remembering just numerical data about the cosmos! Fast-forwarding a few years, I’m at IIT Mandi completing my bachelor in Computer Science.
The best thing happened to me at my institute was STAC…
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/538/1*5QVxaKqpE8zu8diAswRskw.png)
STAC is Space Technology and Astronomy Cell of IIT Mandi which allowed not only to continue my passion for Astronomy but also to develop interest among my juniors. I was selected as a coordinator of the Club and organized various astronomy sessions as telescope night outs with students of our institute. I got to learn and engage in a lot of astrophysics and python owing to the open-source culture established by our seniors in the STAC and Programming Club of IIT Mandi.
I actively coordinated in organizing AstraX (the annual Astro-meet) which also witnessed Dr. Stuart Mumord and Dr. Nick Murphy as keynote speakers. I introduced students of a local college with using Python for Astronomy in an event sponsored by Python Software Foundation.
![Newspaper cutting, image of students organizing a coding session](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*kr7WdXYIvAjcV8jCDIGq4Q.png)
Stepping in the world of Open-Source
I was introduced to “What is Open-Source?” and “how to use git?” in my first year. I initially started my contributions to STAC Github repositories. I opened some issues, created silly PRs, and messed up my git history many times while resolving reviews. Looking at those PRs now, I feel grateful to those who patiently reviewed them. I went through many StackOverflow threads to fix my git sins.
![Github page for STAC](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/999/1*1bgYWGu7_G_pIuBDpFDxMg.png)
I applied to LSF for GSoC 2019. I lagged in community interaction as I felt shy and started very late. Thus, my proposal wasn’t accepted. I decided to give it a go again in 2020. I started early and joined several chat channels(mostly of organizations under OpenAstronomy) for interacting with developers out there.
Me and SunPy
I started with exploring raised issues on the repository and expressed a desire to work on the trivial ones initially. Though I was quite comfortable dealing with conflicts but contributed to a repo with a thorough test-suite for the first time. I was helped a lot by the SunPy community with my PRs and celebrated my first contribution in December of 2019. I owe a lot to the community; being part of them helped to polish my skills and increase my confidence.
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1019/1*UA6AADBLzoCBhCDFe5aX6g.png)
The `net` submodule was more intriguing for me. I tried to bring back the old client pull requests. After the ideas list was out, I was very excited to work on Fido(Federated Internet Data Obtainer).
I was also invited to Python in Astronomy Hack Days that took place in April this year. I worked on adding a `Gong Synoptic Map Client for Fido` with David Stansby.
![Video screenshot of PyAstro HackDay](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*ccxtL1B6_-3sefvoKdushg.png)
At 11:00 PM IST on the 4th of May, I received an email from Google. I was going to spend my summer on improving an interface which fetches solar physics data from satellites and observatories!
![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*jT0kvnSy94TwIw9ewb069g.png)
I had a meeting with my mentors Stuart Mumford and Nabil Freij to formalize the full scope of the project. I feel very fortunate to work with them. I am looking forward to having a great summer ahead in their awesome guidance!