Changelog

# 1.1

1.1.0, 2023-10-23

  • New functions and updates

    • Updated the angulardistance() function to use an updated form of the Vincenty equation, which is a special case for perfect spheres and now valid for arbitrarily small angles. (The previous form suffered from occasional numerical instability and small angle errors) Now users can specify returncomponents=’cartesian’ to get longitude component calculated along line of constant latitude (i.e. with cos(latitude) taken into account) or returncomponents=’spherical’ to get spherically orthogonal components (following orthogonal great circle arcs).

    • Added function calc_optimal_slew_loop() for determining an optimal order for slewing between a handful of targets. If slew rates (degrees/minute) are known for AZ/EL axes, the time per slew loop is calculated for each permutation.

    • Added simple cone search functions to find sources within a certain radius of a reference position/source. sources_within_radius() uses an input list of ephem targets; srctable_within_radius() tests source separations from a table (e.g. pandas/astropy) of source coordinates, which is simpler for working with more traditional (and large!) source lists.

    • Added functionality to nearest_from_target_list() and nearest_standard_fringefinder() – now they can accept a list of obstargets (for the nearest average/median source pos from a group of input targets). Options to return the ephem target or the separations instead of simply the target name have been included.

    • Changed name of plot_night_observing_tracks() to the slightly more general plot_observing_tracks() – without the ‘night’. And added new convenience function for plotting the nighttime version, called plot_night_observing_tracks() , which simply sets light_fill=False

    • Also added convenience function for plot_day_observing_tracks, which simply calls plot_observing_tracks with light=True

    • Upgraded obs.skysep_fixed_single() to have an option to return the longitude/latitude components in addition to the total separation, like with obs.angulardistance. Also added simple function wrap_pmPI() to wrap radian values to range +/- PI.

    • Added a more general query_object_coords() function. Currently its options are to query with astropy or simbad. query_object_coords_simbad updated. Coordinates for both these functions can be returned as decimal, sexagesmial, or astropy SkyCoord.

    • Added convenience functions to make a plot of sun(&moon) separations from a target source over the course of a specified year

    • Added convenience functions for printing daily sunseps and moonseps, with option to only print values for a candence of every N days

    • Added convenience function print_VLBA_observability_summary(). With minimal configuring, prints source observability every N days in the specified range, and also estimates start times dynamic scheduling.

    • Added convenience function eph2c() to take in an ephem source and output the RA,DEC coordinates. Output styles are degrees, radians, sexagesimal using obs.dec2sex and optional kwargs, or astropy.coordinates.SkyCoord

    • Update plot_visibility_tracks etc to have minor tick marks every 1 hrs on 24-hr dur plots

    • package timezonefinder now used instead of tzwhere, as that was causing some core dumps in python 3.7 and issues with recent numpy versions in python 3.10. The timezone lookup functionality is entirely offline after it’s installed.

    • Added many more pre-defined Observer objects for optical, infrared, submm, and radio telescopes across the globe. Includes IVS/VLBI stations that participate in global astrometric/geodetic sessions.

# 1.0

1.0.2, 2023-09-24

  • Minor fixes and tweaks (1.0.2)

    • Merged pull request to remove numpy.warnings filter, due to it being removed from recent np versions and crashing obsplanning on import

    • package multicolorfits has been moved to ‘extras’ instead of a requirement. Functions for plotting images (finder plots) will fail without it, but it requires QT - maintaining QT compatibility on various systems and software versions has become a headache, and the rest of the obsplanning package need not be held hostage by the image plotting dependencies.

1.0.0, 2021-10-03

  • Initial release

    • pyephem-based time conversions, observers (telescope), and target source (sky) objects

    • Plotting/visualization tools for target elevation tracks and finder plots

    • Transit time and target visibility calculations for single telescopes or multiple stations (VLBI/VLBA)

    • Miscellaneous coordinate handling, radio astronomy info, and other helpful functions

    • Preliminary versions use functional approach