Coordinate Handler

This part of the module makes used of the astropy library. The CoordinatesHandler is use to make coordinate transformation from different reference systems. The class contains a SkyCoord object from the astropy library.

from astropy.coordinates import ICRS, Galactic, FK4, FK5
import Coordinates.CoordHandler as CH
import Coordinates.CoordUtilities as CU

#Create a object from RA DEC of the HBL PKS 2155-304 in the FK5 frame
coords = CH.CoordinatesHandler(329.716938,-30.225588,FK5)

This code creates a CoordinatesHandler object with the coordinates of the HBL PKS 2155-304 in the FK5 reference system. Functions ToGalactic, ToFK4, ToFK5 and ToICRS return another SkyCoord object. The functions ChangeFrame will change the reference system of the object.

Another possibilty to create a CoordHandler object is to pass a source name. This use again the astropy module to resolve the name.

m87 = CH.CoordinatesHandler.fromName("M87",FK5)

Helper functions are defined in the module Coordinates.CoordUtilities to give the coordinates in degrees or Hours-minutes-seconds and Degrees-minutes-seconds and compute the angular separation between 2 CoordHandler objects.

Functions GetAltAz* gives the Altitude and Azimute of source at a given date. Currently HESS and Lapalma sites are supported. The returned object is an astropy SkyCoord.

altaz = CU.GetAltAzLAPALMA(m87,date='2016-06-06 00:00:00')
print "Object's Altitude = {0.alt:.4}".format(altaz)