ASPIC handled basic astronomical image processing. Early releases concentrated on image arithmetic, standard filters, expansion/contraction/selection/combination of images, and displaying and manipulating images on the ARGS and other devices. Later releases added new astronomy-specific applications to this sound framework. The ASPIC collection of about 400 image-processing programs was written using the Starlink "interim" environment in the 1980; the software is now obsolete.

PyHammer performs rapid and automatic spectral classification of stars according to the Morgan-Keenan classification system; it is a Python revision of the IDL code The Hammer (ascl:1405.003) and offers additional capabilities. Working in the range of 3,650-10,200 Angstroms, the automatic spectral typing algorithm compares important spectral lines to template spectra and determines the best matching spectral type, ranging from O to L type stars. The code can also determine a star's metallicity ([Fe/H]) and radial velocity shifts. Once the automatic classification algorithm has run, PyHammer provides the user an interface for determining spectral types visually by comparing their spectra to provided templates.