Install gnuastro with Homebrew, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• astarithmetic
• astbuildprog
• astconvertt
• astconvolve
• astcosmiccal
• astcrop
• astfits
• astmatch
• astmkcatalog
• astmkprof
• astnoisechisel
• astquery
• astscript-color-faint-gray
• astscript-ds9-region
• astscript-fits-view
• astscript-pointing-simulate
• astscript-psf-scale-factor
• astscript-psf-select-stars
• astscript-psf-stamp
• astscript-psf-subtract
• astscript-psf-unite
• astscript-radial-profile
• astscript-sort-by-night
• astscript-zeropoint
• astsegment
• aststatistics
• asttable
• astwarp

Project history

Gnuastro was created by Mohammad Akhlaghi and became part of the GNU software ecosystem in the mid-2010s. The GNU project page describes it as an official GNU package and notes that by 2026 it was 11 years old; the page copyright range begins in 2015, and the project presents its GNU coding-standards alignment as central to how astronomers build, inspect, install, and script it.

The project grew out of astronomical image-analysis work and research funding. The manual credits Mohammad Akhlaghi's MEXT-supported graduate work at Tohoku University for the long-term planning that made the idea possible, ERC MUSICOS support at CRAL for a major rewrite into a larger generic collection, and later work at IAC and CEFCA for maturation and user-base growth.

Gnuastro deliberately treats command-line reproducibility as a scientific feature. Its programs share option conventions, Info/manual organization, citation support, and a development workflow on GNU Savannah, so the package functions as both application suite and library platform for building more astronomy tools.

Adoption history

The project page points to package-manager availability, Conda availability, public videos, Matrix rooms, mailing lists, and citation statistics as signs of adoption in astronomy. It is also registered in the Astrophysics Source Code Library, and the project asks researchers to cite Gnuastro papers, program-specific papers, or versioned manual DOIs when it contributes to published work.

Gnuastro's adoption is strongest among researchers who need transparent, scriptable FITS and catalog processing rather than opaque GUI-only pipelines. Its tooling fits Unix pipelines, Makefiles, shell scripts, and reproducible paper workflows where the exact command and version can be archived.

How it is used

Practitioners use tools such as astnoisechisel, astsegment, astmkcatalog, astcrop, astwarp, astfits, asttable, aststatistics, and astarithmetic to process images and tables from the shell. The manual encourages program-specific Info pages, --help output, man pages, and --cite output so users can learn invocation details and record scholarly attribution.

In research workflows, Gnuastro is used for source detection, low-surface-brightness work, catalog generation, image alignment, FITS inspection, table operations, and scripting larger pipelines. Developers can also build against its libraries or use its templates to add new programs inside the project style.

Why package nerds care

Gnuastro is significant because it imports the GNU command-line model into a domain often dominated by large interactive environments. Package maintainers care about it as a serious science stack member with explicit dependencies on GSL, CFITSIO, and WCSLIB, while astronomy users get small composable binaries instead of one monolithic workbench.

Timeline

• 2015: GNU page copyright begins and the project describes Gnuastro as part of the GNU software set.
• 2021: A public ADASS tutorial demonstrated Gnuastro workflows.
• 2024: Manual 0.23 documents acknowledgments, authorship, and institutional support.
• 2026: The GNU page describes Gnuastro as 11 years old and points users to citation tracking and ASCL registration.

Related projects

• Related projects and dependencies include GNU Scientific Library, CFITSIO, WCSLIB, Astrophysics Source Code Library, NASA ADS/SciX, OpenAstronomy community rooms, and astronomy workflow tools built around FITS data.

Sources

• https://ascl.net/1801.009
• https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuastro/
• https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuastro/manual/
• https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuastro/manual/html_node/Acknowledgments.html