PyBDSF (the Python Blob Detection and Source Finder, formerly PyBDSM) is a tool designed to decompose radio interferometry images into sources and make available their properties for further use. PyBDSF can decompose an image into a set of Gaussians, shapelets, or wavelets as well as calculate spectral indices and polarization properties of sources and measure the psf variation across an image. PyBDSF uses an interactive environment based on CASA that will be familiar to most radio astronomers. Additionally, PyBDSF may also be used in Python scripts.

The documentation is currently hosted at http://www.astron.nl/citt/pybdsf

Installation is done through python setup.py. External requirements include the ubuntu packages gfortran, libboost-python-dev, python-setuptools (or similar packages in another Linux distribution). Also, a working numpy installation is required. At runtime, you will need scipy and either pyfits and pywcs or python-casacore.

If you install as a user, use python setup.py install --user. In this case, the script pybdsf is installed in ~/.local/bin, so you might want to add that to your $PATH.

Installation on MacOS / OSX is more involved, you will need the packages mentioned above, for example installed with Homebrew. You will need to tell setup.py to use the same compiler for fortran as for C++.