[AstroPy] numpy; bulk coordinate conversions

[Victoria G. Laidler]

Hi Andrew,

We are just about to release version 0.2 of the AstroLib coords package.

http://www.scipy.org/AstroLibCoordsHome

It uses Jeff Percival's TPM (Telescope Pointing Machine) software to do the
actual coordinate transformations. I've coded up a Python interface for the
most common sets (J2000, B1950, galactic, ecliptic), and there's a hook for
direct access to TPM if you need something more complex.

TPM is in C; the coords package is pure Python, and uses numarray as
its array package.

It's not optimized for handling large numbers of coordinates, but that was
indeed on our list to think about next. So it would be useful to have a 
real-life
use case to help direct that development.

cheers,
Vicki Laidler


Andrew Jaffe wrote:

>Hi All,
>
>Thanks very much for providing and supporting the various astropy packages. Two
>questions:
>
>- are there plans to upgrade to numpy from numarray/numeric?
>
>- I've got to convert a large number -- potentially millions -- of
>  points between coordinate systems. Is there a recommended and/or easy
>  way to do this? (I think this is two separate questions, really: how
>  should I store millions of positions, and how should I then do the
>  conversion?)
>
>Thanks,
>
>Andrew
>
>  
>