Installation

Requirements

DISCO requires Python ≥ 3.9 and the following dependencies, which are declared in pyproject.toml and resolved automatically by pip:

Package	Minimum version	Role
fastapi	≥ 0.110.0	HTTP backend for the GUI server
uvicorn[standard]	≥ 0.29.0	ASGI server used to run FastAPI
python-multipart	—	Multipart form-data parsing (file upload)
astropy	≥ 6.0.0	FITS I/O, WCS, coordinate transforms, unit handling
scipy	≥ 1.11.0	Numerical optimisation, image interpolation, signal processing
matplotlib	≥ 3.8.0	Scientific figure rendering (server-side, Agg backend)
astroquery	≥ 0.4.7	Gaia DR3 proper-motion queries and SIMBAD object metadata
numpy	< 2.0.0	Numerical array operations (pinned below 2.0 for compatibility)
torch	≥ 2.0.0	PyTorch — DiscoNet CNN inference
tqdm	≥ 4.66.0	Progress reporting in the CLI pipeline

Installation from PyPI

The recommended installation method uses pip inside a dedicated virtual environment to avoid dependency conflicts.

# 1. Create and activate a virtual environment
python -m venv disco-env
source disco-env/bin/activate        # Linux / macOS
disco-env\Scripts\activate           # Windows

# 2. Install DISCO from PyPI
pip install disco-astronomy

# 3. Verify the installation
disco-start --help

The package is distributed under the name disco-astronomy on PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/disco-astronomy/

Keeping DISCO up to date

pip install --upgrade disco-astronomy

Included Static Assets

The MANIFEST.in specifies that the following directories are bundled with the source distribution:

• disco/static/ — pre-built React frontend (index.html and assets)

• disco/models/ — pre-trained DiscoNet weight file (disco_model_stable.pth)

These assets are required at runtime and are installed automatically via pip. If the model file is absent from disco/models/, the CLI pipeline falls back to analytical geometry optimisation without CNN priors (see analytical fallback).