CHANGELOG.rst

Changelog

.. currentmodule:: skyfield.positionlib

1.11 — 2019 ?

• Fix: find_discrete() was generating empty arrays of search dates, upsetting the astronomy code, if the start and end dates were very close together. #240

1.10 — 2019 February 2

• Fix: teach Skyfield the new format of the Naval Observatory ΔT data file deltat.preds, whose change in format caused Skyfield to start throwing an exception for new users. #236

1.9 — 2018 September 23

• Added :func:`~skyfield.almanac.seasons` to the :doc:`almanac` module that can be used to predict solstices and equinoxes.
• Fix: the ecliptic coordinate routines no longer raise ValueError: too many values to unpack if they are passed a time array. #207 #208

1.8 — 2018 September 12

• There is now an :doc:`almanac` module can compute the times of sunrise, sunset, and the phases of the moon, based on the search algorithms announced at my recent PyBay talk “An Import Loop and a Fiery Reentry.”
• Two new methods :meth:`~skyfield.positionlib.ICRF.cirs_xyz()` and :meth:`~skyfield.positionlib.ICRF.cirs_radec()` have been contributed which provide support for rotating a position into the Celestial Intermediate Reference System (CIRS). #192

1.7 — 2018 September 3

• Skyfield now supports loading the Hipparcos star catalog as a Pandas dataframe, providing the user with convenient mechanisms for looking up a single star by HIP number or filtering the entire catalog by magnitude. See :doc:`stars` for details.
• Ecliptic coordinates can now be produced for epochs other than J2000 thanks to a new optional parameter specifying the desired epoch for the :meth:`~skyfield.positionlib.ICRF.ecliptic_latlon()` method.
• A position that gives a position, velocity, and time can now be converted into full osculating orbital elements through the routine :func:`~skyfield.elementslib.osculating_elements_of()`.
• A couple of bugs in the load() routine have been fixed. #193 #194

1.6 — 2018 July 25

• Both of the loader methods :meth:`~skyfield.iokit.Loader.load()` and :meth:`~skyfield.iokit.Loader.tle()` now accept not just URLs but also plain local file paths; they correctly re-download a remote file if “reload=True” is specified; and they allow specifying a different local “filename=” than the one at the end of the URL.
• Earth satellite objects no longer try to instantiate a timescale object of their own, which often kicked off an unexpected download of the three files needed to build a timescale.
• Satellite names are now correctly loaded from Space-Track TLE files.
• The ability to create times using Julian Dates is now better advertised, thanks to dedicated timescale methods whose names end in …_jd().

1.5 — 2018 July 4

• The :meth:`~skyfield.positionlib.Geocentric.subpoint()` method now normalizes the longitude values it returns into the range −180° to 180° #182 and returns an actual elevation instead of zero. #185
• Earth satellites now return a real velocity vector instead of zero. #187
• Earth satellites now offer an :meth:`~skyfield.sgp4lib.EarthSatellite.ITRF_position_velocity_error()` method that returns raw ITRF coordinates for users interested in them. #85

1.4 — 2018 May 20

• You can now specify the distance to an object when generating a position from altitude and azimuth coordinates. #158
• The dictionary of satellites returned when you read a TLE file now supports lookup by integer satellite ID, not just by name, and now knows how to parse TLE files from Space-Track. #163 #167
• Star coordinates can now be offered for any epoch, not just J2000. #166
• You can now create a time object given the UT1 date. #91
• Fractional Julian years are now available on Time objects as .J.
• The parameter DUT1 is now available on Time objects as .dut1. #176

1.3 — 2018 April 15

• Geocentric coordinates now have a :meth:`~skyfield.positionlib.Geocentric.subpoint()` method that computes the latitude and longitude of the point beneath that body.
• All of the Timescale time constructor methods now accept arrays.
• Emergency fix to stop Skyfield from endlessly downloading new copies of deltat.preds, since the file has gone out of date at the USNO site.
• Fixed ability of a :class:`~skyfield.starlib.Star` to be initialized with a tuple that breaks units into minutes and seconds (broke in version 1.2).
• Issues fixed: #170 #172

1.2 — 2018 March 29

• The documentation now describes how to create an excerpt of a large JPL ephemeris without downloading the entire file. Several Skyfield tests now run much faster because they use an ephemeris excerpt instead of waiting for a download.
• For load_file() a leading ~ now means “your home directory”.
• You can now initialize a velocity from kilometers per second with Velocity(km_per_s=...).
• Empty time and angle objects no longer raise an exception when printed. (Thanks, JoshPaterson!)
• Issues fixed: #160 #161 #162

1.1 — 2018 January 14

• Positions can now be converted to AstroPy with :meth:`~skyfield.positionlib.ICRF.to_skycoord()`.
• You can now provide a timescale of your own to an :meth:`~skyfield.sgp4lib.EarthSatellite` instead of having it trying to load one itself.
• Downloaded files are no longer marked as executable on Windows.
• A friendly error message, rather than an obscure traceback, is now returned if you try converting a position to alt/az coordinates but the position was not measured from a position on the Earth’s surface.

1.0 — 2017 March 15

• Brought the core API to maturity: replaced the narrow concept of building a “body” from several ephemeris segments with the general concept of a vector function that is the sum of several simpler vector functions.
• Added support for adding and subtracting vector functions.
• Deprecated the Earth topos() method in favor of vector addition.
• Deprecated the Earth satellite() method in favor of vector addition.
• Deprecated the body geometry_of() method in favor of vector subtraction.
• Celestrak satellite files can now be opened with load.tle(url_or_filename).

0.9.1 — 2016 December 10

• Attempted to speed up Earth satellite calculations by caching a single time scale object instead of creating a new one each time.
• Fixed a possible divide-by-zero error when applying deflection to an apparent position.

0.9

• The observe() method of an observer on the Earth’s surface now correctly accounts for the way that the Earth’s gravity will deflect the apparent position of objects that are not exactly overhead, bringing Skyfield’s agreement with the Naval Observatory’s NOVAS library to within half a milliarcsecond.
• The time method tt_calendar() method no longer raises a TypeError when its value is an array.
• Running repr() on a Time array now produces a more compact string that only mentions the start and end of the time period.
• The api.load() call no longer attempts to animate a progress bar if the user is running it under IDLE, which would try to accumulate the updates as a single long line that eventually hangs the window.

0.8

• Added an api document to the project, in reverent imitation of the Pandas API Reference that I keep open in a browser tab every time I am using the Pandas library.
• New method ICRF.separation_from() computes the angular separation between two positions.
• Fixed == between Time objects and other unrelated objects so that it no longer raises an exception.

0.7

• Introduced the Timescale object with methods utc(), tai(), tt(), and tdb() for building time objects, along with a load.timescale() method for building a new Timescale. The load method downloads ΔT and leap second data from official data sources and makes sure the files are kept up to date. This replaces all former techniques for building and specifying dates and times.

• Renamed JulianDate to Time and switched from jd to t as the typical variable used for time in the documentation.

• Deprecated timescale keyword arguments like utc=(…) for both the Time constructor and also for all methods that take time as an argument, including Body.at() and Topos.at().

• Users who want to specify a target directory when downloading a file will now create their own loader object, instead of having to specify a special keyword argument for every download:

  load = api.Loader('~/ephemeris-files')
  load('de421.bsp')
  

0.6.1

• Users can now supply a target directory when downloading a file:

  load('de421.bsp', directory='~/ephemerides')
  

• Fix: removed inadvertent dependency on the Pandas library.

• Fix: load() was raising a PermissionError on Windows after a successful download when it tried to rename the new file.

0.6

• Skyfield now generates its own estimate for delta_t if the user does not supply their own delta_t= keyword when specifying a date. This should make altitude and azimuth angles much more precise.
• The leap-second table has been updated to include 2015 July 1.
• Both ecliptic and galactic coordinates are now supported.

0.5

• Skyfield has dropped the 16-megabyte JPL ephemeris DE421 as an install dependency, since users might choose another ephemeris, or might not need one at all. You now ask for a SPICE ephemeris to be downloaded at runtime with a call like planets = load('de421.bsp').

• Planets are no longer offered as magic attributes, but are looked up through the square bracket operator. So instead of typing planets.mars you should now type planets['mars']. You can run print(planets) to learn which bodies an ephemeris supports.

• Ask for planet positions with body.at(t) instead of body(t).

• Per IAU 2012 Resolution B2, Skyfield now uses lowercase au for the astronomical unit, and defines it as exactly 149 597 870 700 meters. While this API change is awkward for existing users, I wanted to make the change while Skyfield is still pre-1.0. If this breaks a program that you already have running, please remember that a quick pip install skyfield==0.4 will get you up and running again until you have time to edit your code and turn AU into au.

0.4

• To prevent confusion, the :meth:`~Time.astimezone()` and :meth:`~Time.utc_datetime()` methods have been changed to return only a datetime object. If you also need a leap second flag returned, call the new methods :meth:`~Time.astimezone_and_leap_second()` and :meth:`~Time.utc_datetime_and_leap_second()`.

0.3

• The floating-point values of an angle a.radians, a.degrees, and a.hours are now attributes instead of method calls.