Craterpy: Impact crater data science in Python

Craterpy is an open-source Python package that reads impact crater databases, defines spatial regions of interest, and extracts data associated with each crater into standard Python data structures.It provides a simple and consistent toolkit for parsing, cleaning, and georeferencing crater data into Geopandas GeoDataFrames, and allows visualization and extraction of statistics from georeferenced raster imagery of planetary bodies across the Solar System (Figure 1).Craterpy simplifies many error-prone manual tasks like defining crater regions of interest in the correct projection, reprojecting to the format of the desired raster and handling pole-crossing or meridian-crossing geometries.Craterpy helps users access and analyze crater statistical data from lists of craters that can number in the millions from planetary images that can be GBs to TBs in size.All of these features come from a clean and efficient object-oriented user interface, built to be interoperable with the planetary geospatial Python stack and Geographic Information System (GIS) software.

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Publication Details

Journal
The Journal of Open Source Software
Published
2025-09-29
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.08663
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Planetary Science and Exploration
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
1.15

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article

Craterpy: Impact crater data science in Python

E. S. Costello, C. J. Tai Udovicic, Ari Essunfeld
1 citations
The Journal of Open Source Software
Planetary Science and Exploration
1.15
article

Craterpy: Impact crater data science in Python

E. S. Costello, C. J. Tai Udovicic, Ari Essunfeld
article en
1 citations

Abstract

Craterpy is an open-source Python package that reads impact crater databases, defines spatial regions of interest, and extracts data associated with each crater into standard Python data structures.It provides a simple and consistent toolkit for parsing, cleaning, and georeferencing crater data into Geopandas GeoDataFrames, and allows visualization and extraction of statistics from georeferenced raster imagery of planetary bodies across the Solar System (Figure 1).Craterpy simplifies many error-prone manual tasks like defining crater regions of interest in the correct projection, reprojecting to the format of the desired raster and handling pole-crossing or meridian-crossing geometries.Craterpy helps users access and analyze crater statistical data from lists of craters that can number in the millions from planetary images that can be GBs to TBs in size.All of these features come from a clean and efficient object-oriented user interface, built to be interoperable with the planetary geospatial Python stack and Geographic Information System (GIS) software.

The Journal of Open Source SoftwareVol. 10(113)
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (US), Los Alamos National Laboratory (US), Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Geophysics (CZ)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Nuclear Safety and Security Commission
Openalex Percentile: Top 16%
Planetary Science and Exploration
1.15
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