[AstroPy] BCE Time & Dates?
Derek Homeier
derek at astro.physik.uni-goettingen.de
Wed Aug 14 13:30:05 EDT 2019
Hi Rick,
>
> I'm simulating Kepler's "Harmony of the Spheres" using the extended JPL ephemerides not usually available so that I can go back to Bischop Ussher's and Kepler's creation dates, thereby using astropy.time.Time for convenience functions. However, although
>
> >>> from astropy.time import Time
> >>> t = Time('4444-10-03T09:00:00')
> >>> str(t)
> '4444-10-03T09:00:00.000'
> >>> t.jd
> 3344473.875
>
> obviously works, this doesn’t:
>
maybe the Bishop was right? ;-)
> >>> t = Time('-4444-10-03T09:00:00')
> Traceback (most recent call last):
`Time` does support a class of `long*` subformats, which are even automatically recognised,
but somewhat less than intuitive - they require a sign+5-digit year format!
t = Time(‘-04444-10-03T09:00:00’)
should work (at least create a valid Time object. Not sure if there is a logical reason why
signed 4-digit years cannot be recognised (other than apparently only exactly two year
formats being defined; so <4 digits are not accepted either). Might be worth filing an issue.
The `datetime` overflow is a limitation of the builtin library:
datetime.MINYEAR
The smallest year number allowed in a date or datetime object. MINYEAR is 1.
so nothing you can really do about it at the Astropy level.
HTH
Derek
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