SunPy: Improving Radiospectra Functionality and Interoperability [Dhanush sai Mudari]

[dhanushsaimudari]

Requirements

• I've read OA contributor application guide;
• I confirm that the technical content and project plan are my work. (Assisted by Gemini AI for language polishing and diagram generation);
• I've introduced myself to the sub-organisation I'm applying for;
• I've created a blog post and wrote something about the project I'm interested: [LINK TO YOUR BLOG HERE];
• I've contributed at least one patch to the sub-organisation:

sunpy/radiospectra#170
sunpy/radiospectra#172

Description

This proposal aims to improve the Spectrogram data structure by making it more aware of physical coordinates such as time and frequency. This would allow users to work with data using real-world values instead of only array indices.
This will involve extending how time and frequency axes are stored in GenericSpectrogram, and implementing mapping logic to translate between coordinates and indices.
Another important part of the project is background subtraction. From my understanding, real radio data contains various sources of noise and baseline signals. I plan to implement a few commonly used background subtraction methods (such as median or percentile-based approaches) and design an API that also allows users to provide their own custom methods.
I also plan to improve visualization, especially for cases where data has have gaps or irregular sampling. Finally, I will create example notebooks to demonstrate how these features can be used in practice.
I would also like to explore coordinate-based slicing with tolerance, which allows users to query approximate physical values. This can be useful when working with real observational data where exact alignment is not always possible.

Cc: @samaloney @hayesla