In the framework of the Europlanet H2024 European grant [1] some work has been done to define planetary standards for FITS World Coordinate System [2].
Different research communities are involved in planetary coordinate standardization.
Geologists and Remote Sensing specialists work on extending Earth standards to Planets using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and coordinate descriptions endorsed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).
Astronomers work to define FITS World Coordinate System [3] for planetary bodies.
To improve interoperability between those two worlds we implemented the planetary WCS description in Astropy.
This poster describes the related new features available in Astropy 6.0:
- the possibility to define a Geodetic Coordinate Representation on a custom spheroid using its equatorial radius and flattening;
- the definition of a new Bodycentric coordinate representation for custom spheroids;
- the possibility to read and write planetary WCS keywords to define a body-fixed planetary reference frame.
Some examples of applications, also available as jupyter notebooks tutorials, will be discussed.
The work has been funded by the EuroplanetH2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) European project [1] which has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149.

[1] http://www.europlanet-2024-ri.eu/
[2] https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EA000388
[3] https://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/fits_wcs.html