[AstroPy] problems with astroplan

[Steven Boada]

List,

Thanks for all the feedback. I'm still struggling to understand what I 
am missing. I get that I am doing *something* wrong with the times, but 
I feel like I have checked and rechecked.

I made a gist of my example, so I don't have to paste the whole thing here.

https://gist.github.com/boada/12584fa0b7046aedf27aebb0616892a5

I created some functions to make sure I am converting to/from UTC, and 
labeled all of my variables to help me keep track of everything. I still 
don't understand why the is_observable function returns False.

Plotting the airmass for the same time span

astroplan.plots.plot_airmass(target[:1], kpno, observable_time_utc)

clearly shows the object is rising, and should satisfy my constraints. 
I'm not sure what I am missing.

thanks again

steven

On 11/07/2016 11:05 PM, banyal wrote:
>
> Would be great to have the 'object visibility' in local time.  This 
> issue was also flagged  by someone in the discussion group on 
> astroplan/. /I hope they  fix it soon. /
> /
>
> Regards,
>
> Ravinder
>
> On 2016-11-08 03:09, Matthew Craig wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> IIRC, astropy times do not support timezones in a very direct way 
>> [1]. Both start_time and end_time from the example will be 
>> interpreted as times in UTC, and the time arguments to functions in 
>> astroplan are in UTC, not local time, even if you specify the time 
>> zone when you create the Observer object. The documentation for 
>> target_is_up say that the time is passed directly to the astropy Time 
>> class which, in the cases in the sample code, will assume UTC.
>> It looks like if you want to get local times you could use the 
>> astropy_time_to_datetime method of Observer.
>> I'm using astropy in an undergraduate observing class 
>> this semester and have been reminding them (repeatedly) that they 
>> need to do local to UTC conversions themselves and then feed the UTC 
>> times into astropy/astroplan. That is a little inconvenient, but 
>> seemed less error-prone than explaining how to use pytz or create a 
>> TimezoneInfo object (their python background is typically limited).
>> [1]: http://docs.astropy.org/en/latest/time/index.html#timezones
>>
>> Matt Craig
>>
>> schedule: http://physics.mnstate.edu/craig
>> ——
>> Professor
>> Department of Physics and Astronomy
>> Minnesota State University Moorhead
>> 1104 7th Ave S, Moorhead MN 56563
>>
>> office: Hagen 307F
>> phone: (218) 477-2439
>> fax: (218) 477-2290
>>
>>> On Nov 7, 2016, at 2:57 PM, Eric L. N. Jensen 
>>> <ejensen1 at swarthmore.edu <mailto:ejensen1 at swarthmore.edu>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Good catch, Gautham.
>>>
>>> And more generally to that point, Steven, I'd suggest getting in the 
>>> habit of *always* specifying the timezone for any times you use in 
>>> your code (e.g. in any call to 'Time'), even if you're using UTC, 
>>> just to be more clear to yourself and to anyone reading your code 
>>> what timezone you're working with.  In the example you gave, when 
>>> you're specifying the start and end times it would still be good to 
>>> explicitly specify the timezone there as well.
>>>
>>> Eric
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Nov 7, 2016, at 3:53 PM, Gautham Narayan <gnarayan at noao.edu 
>>>> <mailto:gnarayan at noao.edu>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Specify the time as well as the date. 2016-11-11 is being parsed at 
>>>> 2016-11-11 00:00:00 UTC, at which point it's only 5pm here in AZ, 
>>>> so it's not yet civil twilight at Kitt Peak.
>>>>
>>>> print(astroplan.is <http://astroplan.is>_observable(constraint, 
>>>> kpno, target[:1], times=[Time('2016-11-11 12:15:00')]))
>>>> # prints True
>>>>
>>>
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>
> -- 
> Best Regards
> Dr Ravinder Banyal
> Indian Institute of Astrophysics
> Koramangala 2nd Block
> Bangalore 560034
> Phone: 08025530672
>
>
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-- 

Steven Boada

Postdoctoral Researcher
Rutgers University
boada at physics.rutgers.edu

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