Provides astronomy ephemeris to plan telescope observations
Project description
- Name:
astroobs
- Website:
- Version:
- 1.4.4
Check the astroobs.eu website for a friendly web-interface of that library! (soon)
Astroobs provides astronomy ephemeris (airmass, azimuth, altitude, moon separation, etc) of a night sky target as a function of the date-time and the longitude/latitude of the observer. A list of international observatories is provided as well as a SIMBAD-querier to easily import targets. This package is based on pyephem ephemeris calculations. The main difference with this latter package is that astroobs provides a very straight-forward library for the observer to get the critical information in order to plan an observation. It also provides convenient turn-key tools to convert epochs and plot diagrams. It is released under the GNU General Public License v3 or later (GPLv3+).
import astroobs as obs
o=obs.Observation('vlt', local_date=(2015, 1, 1), moonAvoidRadius=15, horizon_obs = 40)
o.add_target('aldebaran')
o.add_target('canopus')
o.plot()
aldebaran = o.targets[0]
aldebaran.whenobs(o, (2015,1,1), (2015, 2, 1))
Documentation
Refer to this page, http://pythonhosted.org/astroobs/astroobs.html
Requirements
astroobs requires the following Python packages:
NumPy: for basic numerical routines
Astropy: for angle units
Astroquery: for querying Simbad
pyephem: for the calculations of ephemeris
matplotlib: for plotting (optional)
pytz: for timezones management
re, os, sys, datetime, time: for basic stuff
astroobs is tested on Linux and Python 2.7 only, but should cross-plateform and python3 friendly without too many issues.
Installation
The easiest and fastest way for you to get the package and run is to install astroobs through pip:
$ pip install astroobs
You can also download astroobs source from GitHub and type:
$ python setup.py install
Dependencies will not be installed automatically. Refer to the requirements section. If you have an anaconda distribution, you will only need to install astroquery and pyephem.
Contributing
Code writing
Code contributions are welcome! Just send a pull request on GitHub and we will discuss it. In the issue tracker you may find pending tasks.
Bug reporting
If you think you’ve found one please refer to the issue tracker on GitHub.
Additional options
You can either send me an e-mail or add it to the issues/wishes list on GitHub.
Citing
If you use astroobs on your project, please drop me a line <mailto:{my first name}.{my family name}@obspm.fr>, you will get fixes and additional options earlier.
License
astroobs is released under the GNU General Public License v3 or later (GPLv3+). Please refer to the LICENSE file.
Changelog
1.4.4 (2016-08-06)
Changed license to GNU
Updated documentation
Added show_all_obs() to show all available observatories
Automated the version management
Added disclaimer at import
Set default legend parameter to True in plot() and polar()
Fixed deprecation warning at display of Target
1.0.0 (2016-05-03)
Initial release.
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