Motivation

This package is designed to address the need for streamlined access and standardisation of data from the Exoplanet Follow-up Observing Program (ExoFOP). ExoFOP is a resource for collaborative efforts to study exoplanet candidates, serving as a repository for data collected by projects and the community. The observations posted on ExoFOP often present a challenge due to inconsistent column naming in the data files. With contributions from different observatories and processing pipelines, disparate labels are assigned to identical data concepts, hindering seamless analysis. Our package addresses this problem by providing a convenient framework for harmonising these different column names into a unified nomenclature.

This standardisation is crucial for researchers looking to perform large-scale surveys of ground-based telescope observations, where it is not possible to examine and reformat each dataset individually. In addition to opening up the possibility of large surveys, our package greatly simplifies programmatic access to ExoFOP, thus facilitating the automated the analysis of ground-based observations from individual systems. The high-level, yet flexible interface is designed to appeal not only to experienced researchers, but also to amateur astronomers who want to explore ground-based data. From facilitating the analysis of single systems to enabling automated searches and large-scale data processing, our package serves as a versatile tool for advancing exoplanetary research.