# Is there any interest in WebAssembly ports of foundational Astronomy packages?

**URL:** <https://community.openastronomy.org/t/is-there-any-interest-in-webassembly-ports-of-foundational-astronomy-packages/317>\
**Category:** Astropy\
**Tags:** question\
**Created:** [March 18, 2022, 2:26pm UTC](https://community.openastronomy.org/t/is-there-any-interest-in-webassembly-ports-of-foundational-astronomy-packages/317 "2022-03-18T14:26:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dburke](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/community.openastronomy.org/dburke/32/175_2.png) [@dburke](https://community.openastronomy.org/u/dburke)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2022, 2:26pm UTC](https://community.openastronomy.org/t/is-there-any-interest-in-webassembly-ports-of-foundational-astronomy-packages/317/1 "2022-03-18T14:26:18Z")

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There are new efforts to get python-based code runnable directly from the web browser, based on the webassembly runtime. As an example, see

- [JupyterLite: Jupyter ❤️ WebAssembly ❤️ Python | by Jeremy Tuloup | Jupyter Blog](https://blog.jupyter.org/jupyterlite-jupyter-%EF%B8%8F-webassembly-%EF%B8%8F-python-f6e2e41ab3fa)

and the related links it includes.

Is there any interest in providing compiled Astronomy packages in WebAssembly form? Can we create a group to do this? Are people already doing this?

As an example of why people might want to do this, I strongly urge you to look at the JS9 project at [https://js9.si.edu/](https://js9.si.edu/) which provides a DS9-like image viewer which runs directly from your web browser. It is built from C code but compiled to WebAssembly and is both pretty cool, and quite useful (e.g. is used to provide access to data in the XMM data archive, if memory serves).

Doug