Name

astroobs

Website

https://github.com/ceyzeriat/astroobs

Author

Guillaume Schworer

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))

Refer to this page, http://pythonhosted.org/astroobs/astroobs.html

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.

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.

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.

If you think you've found one please refer to the issue tracker on GitHub.

You can either send me an e-mail or add it to the issues/wishes list on GitHub.

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.

astroobs is released under the GNU General Public License v3 or later (GPLv3+). Please refer to the LICENSE file.