Can I use jupyter notebooks or install Python modules like Astropy, matplotlib, and Scipy with CIAO 4.17?

Jupyter

conda

If CIAO was installed with the conda package manager, then you will need to install Jupyter support with the following command, after the conda-CIAO environment has been activated:

unix% conda install -c conda-forge --freeze-installed jupyter jupyterlab

Note that the jupyterlab environment is an evolution of the notebook interface, which can be started by saying jupyter lab rather than jupyter notebook.

ciao-install

When installed with ciao-install, CIAO 4.17 comes with support for Jupyter notebooks, so you can just say, after starting CIAO:

unix% jupyter notebook

Installing Python packages

The recommended environment for installing Python packages is the conda-installed version of CIAO, since you can take advantage of both conda and pip3 to install code. please see the The steps described in the Python module installation guide for more details.

CIAO conda and AstroConda

Support for conda was first added in CIAO 4.12 and there to be some teething problems. One known issue (as of December 2020) is that the cfitsio package provided by CIAO clashes with that from AstroConda, and we currently recommend that people do not try to install CIAO and AstroConda packages into the same conda environment.

Keep a copy of the CIAO installation files

Installing additional Python packages into CIAO has the potential to corrupt (break) the CIAO installation.

We strongly advise that users of ciao-install keep copies of the CIAO installation files - the *.tar.gz files downloaded by the ciao-install installation script - so that the CIAO installation can be easily re-created if necessary.

Users of conda will find that the CIAO installation files are automatically stored on disk, so environments can be re-created quickly (unless you have had to clean out the conda installation).