Pisces#
Pisces (or Py-ICs) is an open-source toolkit for constructing models of astrophysical systems and generating data for simulations. Designed for flexibility and ease of use, Pisces enables researchers to create a wide range of astrophysical models—including galaxies, galaxy clusters, and early universe perturbations—whether for direct analysis or as input for simulation software.
Rather than being limited to initial condition generation, Pisces provides a modular and extensible framework that supports a variety of scientific use cases. It is built to integrate seamlessly with major astrophysical simulation tools through dedicated frontends, ensuring broad compatibility and interoperability.
The core package is structured to facilitate customization and development, allowing users to adapt it to their specific research needs. All essential tools for model construction are included, with an emphasis on accessibility and ease of extension.
Development takes place on GitHub. If you encounter any issues, documentation gaps, or have feature suggestions, we encourage you to submit them via the repository’s issues page.
Installation#
Pisces is written in Python 3.8 and is compatible with Python 3.8+ with continued support for older versions of Python. For instructions on installation and getting started, check out the Quickstart Guide page.
Resources#
Quickstart Guide
New to Pisces? The quickstart guide is the best place to start learning to use all of the
tools that we have to offer!
Examples
Have some basic experience with Pisces but want to see a guide on how to execute a particular task? Need
to find some code to copy and paste? The examples page contains a wide variety of use case examples and explanations
for all of the various parts of the Pisces library.
User References
The user guide contains comprehensive, text-based explanations of the backbone components of the Pisces library.
If you’re looking for information on the underlying code or for more details on particular aspects of the API, this is your best resource.
API Reference
Doing a deep dive into our code? Looking to contribute to development? The API reference is a comprehensive resource complete with source code and type hinting so that you can find every detail you might need.