Installing Lightkurve

Using conda

The easiest way to install Lightkurve and all of its dependencies is to use the conda package manager, which is part of the Anaconda Python distribution. With conda installed, simply run the following command in a terminal window:

$ conda install --channel conda-forge lightkurve

If you have a previous version of Lightkurve installed, you can update it using:

$ conda update lightkurve

To verify which version of Lightkurve you have installed, run:

$ python -c "import lightkurve; print(lightkurve.__version__)"

Using pip

An alternative way to install Lightkurve is to use the pip package manager, which is a standard part of all Python distributions. To install Lightkurve, run the following command in a terminal window:

$ pip install lightkurve --upgrade

The --upgrade flag is optional, but recommended if you already have Lightkurve installed and want to upgrade to the latest version.

By default, pip won’t install Lightkurve’s optional dependencies. We configured it this way because pip requires a C compiler to install some of these optional dependencies, which is not usually available on Windows systems. If you want to try to install these, you can use:

$ pip install lightkurve[all]

If you encounter any compilation errors using this command, then we recommend that you use the conda package manager instead.

Note

If you encounter a PermissionError this means that you do not have the required administrative access to install new packages to your Python installation. In this case you may consider using the --user option to install the package into your home directory. You can read more about how to do this in the pip documentation.

Requirements

Lightkurve has the following minimum requirements:

  • Python: 2.7, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, or later.

  • Astropy: 1.3 or later.

  • Numpy: 1.11 or later.

  • Scipy: 0.19 or later.

  • Matplotlib: 1.5.3 or later.

  • Astroquery 0.3.9 or later.

  • Pandas.

A few extra features (interact widgets, PLD correction, and BLS periodograms) require optional dependencies which are not installed by default using pip (though they are installed if you use conda):

  • Astropy: 3.1 or later (for BLS periodograms).

  • Bokeh: 1.0 or later (for interactive widgets).

  • Scikit-learn and Celerite (for PLD systematics correction).

We recommend using the Anaconda Python distribution, which will install Python alongside its most common scientific packages, including all those listed above. If you install Lightkurve using conda or pip as explained above, any missing dependencies will be installed automatically.

Installing the development version

If you want to experiment with the latest development version of Lightkurve, you can install it straight from the master branch on GitHub:

$ git clone https://github.com/KeplerGO/lightkurve.git
$ cd lightkurve
$ pip install -e .

This is recommended for anyone who wants to edit the source code. Please see our guide on contributing to lightkurve for additional instructions.