Member-only story
INTRODUCTION TO MATPLOTLIB
Matplotlib Styles for Scientific Plotting
Customizing Matplotlib for your scientific data visualization
There are at least two inspirations in writing this story. The first inspiration is coming from my participation in Summer School on Galaxies and Cosmology (SSGC 2020). It has three parts: Public Lecture, Lectures, and Workshops. One of the Workshops analyzed the weak gravitational lensing using Oguri et al. (2012) as the primary reference. Oguri-san gave the participants his code to analyze the lensing, including the Maptlotlib parameter settings. I won’t talk about the gravitational lensing, but how to generate a professional plot using Matplotlib, as shown in Oguri-san paper.
The other one comes from when I was reading the General Instructions to submit an article in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), one of the world’s leading primary research journals in astronomy and astrophysics. One of the parts in the instructions is how to embed figures in MNRAS. The authors are advised to ensure the color used in their figures are color-blind friendly. Here, I quote the instruction.
Where possible, please ensure that your figures are color-blind friendly. The use of red and green in the same figure is particularly problematic for some…
