JPARSEC: a Java package for astronomy with twelve years of development and use

TL;DR

JPARSEC is a comprehensive, well-documented Java library for astronomy, developed over twelve years, covering ephemerides, astrophysical modeling, and outreach tools, including applications like planetariums and ephemerides servers.

Contribution

The paper introduces JPARSEC, a robust, optimized Java library with extensive features for astronomy, including models, outreach tools, and applications, developed over twelve years.

Findings

Includes over 250,000 lines of code, comparable to major tools like Astropy.

Supports a wide range of applications from ephemerides to Android planetariums.

Provides well-documented, optimized tools for astronomers, especially in radioastronomy.

Abstract

JPARSEC is a Java library initially developed to implement a complete set of algorithms to compute ephemerides. The project started twelve years ago and soon evolved to also cover astrophysical modelling and outreach. JPARSEC itself includes more than 250 000 lines of code, similar or larger than other popular tools like Astropy, complemented with models and other projects operational since years. The library is focused on being robust, optimized, well written and documented, providing a complete set of tools for astronomers, with special attention to radioastronomy. The projects written using JPARSEC as the core library cover a wide range of fields from models with complete graphical user interfaces to an ephemerides server with high quality charts, or even an Android planetarium. In this Paper I present the main characteristics of JPARSEC, with special attention to the core library and documentation, and I describe the main projects developed based on it.