The Astropy Project supports and fosters the development of open-source and openly developed Python packages that provide commonly needed functionality to the astronomical community. A key element of the Astropy Project is the core package astropy, which serves as the foundation for more specialized projects and packages. In this article, we summarize key features in the core package as of the recent major release, version 5.0, and provide major updates on the Project. We then discuss supporting a broader ecosystem of interoperable packages, including connections with several astronomical observatories and missions. We also revisit the future outlook of the Astropy Project and the current status of Learn Astropy. We conclude by raising and discussing the current and future challenges facing the Project.

The Flora family resides in the densely populated inner main belt, bounded in semimajor axis by the ν 6 secular resonance and the Jupiter 3:1 mean motion resonance. The presence of several large families that overlap dynamically with the Floras (e.g., the Vesta, Baptistina, and Nysa-Polana families), and the removal of a significant fraction of Floras via the nearby ν 6 resonance complicates the Flora family's distinction in both proper orbital elements and reflectance properties. Here we use orbital information from the Asteroids Dynamic Site (AstDyS), color information from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), and albedo information from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) to obtain the median orbital and reflectance properties of the Floras by sampling the core of the family in multidimensional phase space. We find the median Flora SDSS colors to be a * = 0.126 ± 0.007 and i − z = −0.037 ± 0.007; the median Flora albedo is p V = 0.291 ± 0.012.These properties allow us to define ranges for the Flora family in orbital and The size-dependent dispersion of the Flora members in semimajor axis (the "V" plot) then yields an age for the family of 910 +160−120 My, with the uncertainty dominated by the uncertainty in the material properties of the family members (e.g., density and surface thermal properties). We discuss the effects on our age estimate of two independent processes that both introduce obliquity variations among the family members on short (My) timescales: 1) the capture of Flora members in spin-orbit resonance, and 2) YORP-driven obliquity variation through YORP cycles. Accounting for these effects does not significantly change this age determination.

Magnetic bright points in the solar photosphere, visible in both continuum and G-band images, indicate footpoints of kilogauss magnetic flux tubes extending to the corona. The power spectrum of bright-point motion is thus also the power spectrum of Alfvén wave excitation, transporting energy up flux tubes into the corona. This spectrum is a key input in coronal and heliospheric models. We produce a power spectrum of bright-point motion using radiative magnetohydrodynamic simulations, exploiting spatial resolution higher than can be obtained in present-day observations, while using automated tracking to produce large data quantities. We find slightly higher amounts of power at all frequencies compared to observation-based spectra, while confirming the spectrum shape of recent observations. This also provides a prediction for observations of bright points with DKIST, which will achieve similar resolution and high sensitivity. We also find a granule size distribution in support of an observed twopopulation distribution, and we present results from tracking passive tracers which show a similar power spectrum to that of bright points. Finally, we introduce a simplified, laminar model of granulation, with which we explore the roles of turbulence and of the properties of the granulation pattern in determining bright-point motion.From these MURaM simulations, we extracted granule size distributions, the motion paths of passive tracers, and the motion paths of automatically-identified bright points. This

The middle corona, the region roughly spanning heliocentric distances from 1.5 to 6 solar radii, encompasses almost all of the influential physical transitions and processes that govern the behavior of coronal outflow into the heliosphere. The solar wind, eruptions, and flows pass through the region, and they are shaped by it. Importantly, the region also modulates inflow from above that can drive dynamic changes at lower heights in the inner corona. Consequently, the middle corona is essential for comprehensively connecting the corona to the heliosphere and for developing corresponding global models. Nonetheless, because it is challenging to observe, the region has been poorly studied by both major solar remote-sensing and in-situ missions and instruments, extending back to the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) era. Thanks to recent advances in instrumentation, observational processing techniques, and a realization of the importance of the region, interest in the middle corona has increased. Although the region cannot be intrinsically separated from other regions of the solar atmosphere, there has emerged a need to define the region in terms of its location and extension in the solar atmosphere, its composition, the physical transitions that it covers, and the underlying physics believed to shape the region. This article aims to define the middle corona, its physical characteristics, and give an overview of the processes that occur there.

Light curves produced by the Kepler mission demonstrate stochastic brightness fluctuations (or flicker) of stellar origin which contribute to the noise floor, limiting the sensitivity of exoplanet detection and characterization methods. In stars with surface convection, the primary driver of these variations on short (sub-eight-hour) timescales is believed to be convective granulation. In this work, we improve existing models of this granular flicker amplitude, or F 8, by including the effect of the Kepler bandpass on measured flicker, by incorporating metallicity in determining convective Mach numbers, and by using scaling relations from a wider set of numerical simulations. To motivate and validate these changes, we use a recent database of convective flicker measurements in Kepler stars, which allows us to more fully detail the remaining model-prediction error. Our model improvements reduce the typical misprediction of flicker amplitude from a factor of 2.5–2. We rule out rotation period and strong magnetic activity as possible explanations for the remaining model error, and we show that binary companions may affect convective flicker. We also introduce an envelope model that predicts a range of flicker amplitudes for any one star to account for some of the spread in numerical simulations, and we find that this range covers 78% of observed stars. We note that the solar granular flicker amplitude is lower than most Sun-like stars. This improved model of convective flicker amplitude can better characterize this source of noise in exoplanet studies as well as better inform models and simulations of stellar granulation.