Using the SkyCoord High-level Class¶

The SkyCoord class provides a simple and flexible user interface for celestial coordinate representation, manipulation, and transformation between coordinate frames. This is a high-level class that serves as a wrapper around the low-level coordinate frame classes like ICRS and FK5 which do most of the heavy lifting.

The key distinctions between SkyCoord and the low-level classes (Using and Designing Coordinate Frames) are as follows:

The SkyCoord object can maintain the union of frame attributes for all built-in and user-defined coordinate frames in the astropy.coordinates.frame_transform_graph. Individual frame classes hold only the required attributes (e.g. equinox, observation time or observer location) for that frame. This means that a transformation from FK4 (with equinox and observation time) to ICRS (with neither) and back to FK4 via the low-level classes would not remember the original equinox and observation time. Since the SkyCoord object stores all attributes, such a round-trip transformation will return to the same coordinate object.
The SkyCoord class is more flexible with inputs to accommodate a wide variety of user preferences and available data formats.
The SkyCoord class has a number of convenience methods that are useful in typical analysis.
At present, SkyCoord objects can use only coordinate frames that have transformations defined in the astropy.coordinates.frame_transform_graph transform graph object.

Creating SkyCoord objects¶

The SkyCoord class accepts a wide variety of inputs for initialization. At a minimum these must provide one or more celestial coordinate values with unambiguous units. Typically one also specifies the coordinate frame, though this is not required.

Common patterns are shown below. In this description the values in upper case like COORD or FRAME represent inputs which are described in detail in the Initialization Syntax section. Elements in square brackets like [unit=UNIT] are optional.

SkyCoord(COORD, [FRAME], keyword_args ...)
SkyCoord(LON, LAT, [frame=FRAME], [unit=UNIT], keyword_args ...)
SkyCoord([FRAME], <lon_attr>=LON, <lat_attr>=LAT, keyword_args ...)

The examples below illustrate common ways of initializing a SkyCoord object. These all reflect initializing using spherical coordinates, which is the default for all built-in frames. In order to understand working with coordinates using a different representation such as cartesian or cylindrical, see the section on Representations. First some imports:

>>> from astropy.coordinates import SkyCoord  # High-level coordinates
>>> from astropy.coordinates import ICRS, Galactic, FK4, FK5  # Low-level frames
>>> from astropy.coordinates import Angle, Latitude, Longitude  # Angles
>>> import astropy.units as u
>>> import numpy as np

The coordinate values and frame specification can now be provided using positional and keyword arguments. First we show positional arguments for RA and Dec:

>>> SkyCoord(10, 20, unit='deg')  # Defaults to ICRS  
<SkyCoord (ICRS): (ra, dec) in deg
    (10., 20.)>

>>> SkyCoord([1, 2, 3], [-30, 45, 8], frame='icrs', unit='deg')  
<SkyCoord (ICRS): (ra, dec) in deg
    [(1., -30.), (2., 45.), (3.,   8.)]>

Notice that the first example above does not explicitly give a frame. In this case, the default is taken to be the ICRS system (approximately correct for “J2000” equatorial coordinates). It is always better to explicitly specify the frame when it is known to be ICRS, however, as anyone reading the code will be better able to understand the intent.

String inputs in common formats are acceptable, and the frame can be supplied as either a class type like FK4, an instance of a frame class, a SkyCoord instance (from which the frame will be extracted), or the lower-case version of a frame name as a string, e.g. "fk4":

>>> coords = ["1:12:43.2 +1:12:43", "1 12 43.2 +1 12 43"]
>>> sc = SkyCoord(coords, frame=FK4, unit=(u.hourangle, u.deg), obstime="J1992.21")
>>> sc = SkyCoord(coords, frame=FK4(obstime="J1992.21"), unit=(u.hourangle, u.deg))
>>> sc = SkyCoord(coords, frame='fk4', unit='hourangle,deg', obstime="J1992.21")

>>> sc = SkyCoord("1h12m43.2s", "+1d12m43s", frame=Galactic)  # Units from strings
>>> sc = SkyCoord("1h12m43.2s +1d12m43s", frame=Galactic)  # Units from string
>>> sc = SkyCoord(l="1h12m43.2s", b="+1d12m43s", frame='galactic')
>>> sc = SkyCoord("1h12.72m +1d12.71m", frame='galactic')

Note that frame instances with data and SkyCoord instances can only be passed as frames using the frame= keyword argument and not as positional arguments.

For representations that have ra and dec attributes one can supply a coordinate string in a number of other common formats. Examples include:

>>> sc = SkyCoord("15h17+89d15")
>>> sc = SkyCoord("275d11m15.6954s+17d59m59.876s")
>>> sc = SkyCoord("8 00 -5 00.6", unit=(u.hour, u.deg))
>>> sc = SkyCoord("J080000.00-050036.00", unit=(u.hour, u.deg))
>>> sc = SkyCoord("J1874221.31+122328.03", unit=u.deg)

Astropy Quantity-type objects are acceptable and encouraged as a form of input:

>>> ra = Longitude([1, 2, 3], unit=u.deg)  # Could also use Angle
>>> dec = np.array([4.5, 5.2, 6.3]) * u.deg  # Astropy Quantity
>>> sc = SkyCoord(ra, dec, frame='icrs')
>>> sc = SkyCoord(ra=ra, dec=dec, frame=ICRS, obstime='2001-01-02T12:34:56')

Finally it is possible to initialize from a low-level coordinate frame object.

>>> c = FK4(1 * u.deg, 2 * u.deg)
>>> sc = SkyCoord(c, obstime='J2010.11', equinox='B1965')  # Override defaults

A key subtlety highlighted here is that when low-level objects are created they have certain default attribute values. For instance the FK4 frame uses equinox='B1950.0 and obstime=equinox as defaults. If this object is used to initialize a SkyCoord it is possible to override the low-level object attributes that were not explicitly set. If the coordinate above were created with c = FK4(1 * u.deg, 2 * u.deg, equinox='B1960') then creating a SkyCoord with a different equinox would raise an exception.

Initialization Syntax¶

For spherical representations, which are the most common and are the default input format for all built-in frames, the syntax for SkyCoord is given below:

SkyCoord(COORD, [FRAME | frame=FRAME], [unit=UNIT], keyword_args ...)
SkyCoord(LON, LAT, [DISTANCE], [FRAME | frame=FRAME], [unit=UNIT], keyword_args ...)
SkyCoord([FRAME | frame=FRAME], <lon_name>=LON, <lat_name>=LAT, [unit=UNIT],
         keyword_args ...)

In the above description, elements in all capital letters (e.g. FRAME) describes a user input of that element type. Elements in square brackets are optional. For non-spherical inputs see the Representations section.

LON, LAT

Longitude and latitude value can be specified as separate positional arguments. The following options are available for longitude and latitude:

Single angle value:
- Quantity object
- Plain numeric value with unit keyword specifying the unit
- Angle string which is formatted for Creation of Longitude or Latitude objects
List or Quantity array or numpy array of angle values
Angle, Longitude, or Latitude object, which can be scalar or array-valued

DISTANCE

The distance to the object from the frame center can be optionally specified:

Single distance value:
- Quantity or Distance object
- Plain numeric value for a dimensionless distance
- Plain numeric value with unit keyword specifying the unit
List or Quantity or Distance array or numpy array of angle values

COORD

This input form uses a single object to supply coordinate data. For the case of spherical coordinate frames, the coordinate can include one or more longitude and latitude pairs in one of the following ways:

Single coordinate string with a LON and LAT value separated by a space. The respective values can be any string which is formatted for Creation of Longitude or Latitude objects, respectively.
List or numpy array of such coordinate strings
List of (LON, LAT) tuples, where each LON and LAT are scalars (not arrays)
N x 2 numpy or Quantity array of values where the first column is longitude and the second column is latitude, e.g. [[270, -30], [355, +85]] * u.deg
List of (LON, LAT, DISTANCE) tuples
N x 3 numpy or Quantity array of values where columns are longitude, latitude, and distance respectively.

The input can also be more generalized objects that are not necessarily represented in the standard spherical coordinates:

Coordinate frame object, e.g. FK4(1*u.deg, 2*u.deg, obstime='J2012.2')
SkyCoord object (which just makes a copy of the object)
BaseRepresentation subclass object like SphericalRepresentation, CylindricalRepresentation, or CartesianRepresentation.

FRAME

This can be a BaseCoordinateFrame frame class, an instance of such a class, or the corresponding string alias. The frame classes that are built in to astropy are ICRS, FK5, FK4, FK4NoETerms, Galactic, and AltAz. The string aliases are simply lower-case versions of the class name.

If the frame is not supplied then you will see a special ICRS identifier. This indicates that the frame is unspecified and operations that require comparing coordinates (even within that object) are not allowed.

unit=UNIT

The unit specifier can be one of the following:

Unit object which is an angular unit that is equivalent to Unit('radian')
Single string with a valid angular unit name
2-tuple of Unit objects or string unit names specifying the LON and LAT unit respectively, e.g. ('hourangle', 'degree')
Single string with two unit names separated by a comma, e.g. 'hourangle,degree'

If only a single unit is provided then it applies to both LON and LAT.

Other keyword arguments

In lieu of positional arguments to specify the longitude and latitude, the frame-specific names can be used as keyword arguments:

ra, dec: LON, LAT values, optional: RA and Dec for frames where these are representation, including [FIXME] ICRS, FK5, FK4, and FK4NoETerms.
l, b: LON, LAT values, optional: Galactic l and b for the Galactic frame.

The following keywords can be specified for any frame:

distance: valid Distance initializer, optional: Distance from reference from center to source.
obstime: valid Time initializer, optional: Time of observation
equinox: valid Time initializer, optional: Coordinate frame equinox

If custom user-defined frames are included in the transform graph and they have additional frame attributes, then those attributes can also be set via corresponding keyword args in the SkyCoord initialization.

Array operations¶

It is possible to store arrays of coordinates in a SkyCoord object, and manipulations done in this way will be orders of magnitude faster than looping over a list of individual SkyCoord objects:

>>> ra = np.linspace(0, 36000, 1001) * u.deg
>>> dec = np.linspace(-90, 90, 1001) * u.deg

>>> sc_list = [SkyCoord(r, d, frame='icrs') for r, d in zip(ra, dec)]  
>>> timeit sc_gal_list = [c.galactic for c in sc_list]  
1 loops, best of 3: 20.4 s per loop

>>> sc = SkyCoord(ra, dec, frame='icrs')
>>> timeit sc_gal = sc.galactic  
100 loops, best of 3: 21.8 ms per loop

In addition to vectorized transformations, you can do the usual array slicing, dicing, and selection, using the same methods and attributes that one uses for ndarray instances:

>>> north_mask = sc.dec > 0
>>> sc_north = sc[north_mask]
>>> len(sc_north)
500
>>> sc[2:4]  
<SkyCoord (ICRS): (ra, dec) in deg
    [( 72., -89.64), (108., -89.46)]>
>>> sc[500]  
<SkyCoord (ICRS): (ra, dec) in deg
    (0., 0.)>
>>> sc[0:-1:100].reshape(2, 5)  
<SkyCoord (ICRS): (ra, dec) in deg
    [[(0., -90.), (0., -72.), (0., -54.), (0., -36.), (0., -18.)],
     [(0.,   0.), (0.,  18.), (0.,  36.), (0.,  54.), (0.,  72.)]]>

Note that similarly to the ndarray methods, all but flatten try to use new views of the data, with the data copied only if that it is impossible (as discussed, e.g., in the documentation for numpy reshape()).

Attributes¶

The SkyCoord object has a number of useful attributes which come in handy. By digging through these we’ll learn a little bit about SkyCoord and how it works.

To begin (if you don’t know already) one of the most important tools for learning about attributes and methods of objects is “TAB-discovery”. From within IPython you can type an object name, the period, and then the <TAB> key to see what’s available. This can often be faster than reading the documentation:

>>> sc = SkyCoord(1, 2, frame='icrs', unit='deg', obstime='2013-01-02 14:25:36')
>>> sc.<TAB>  
sc.T                                   sc.match_to_catalog_3d
sc.altaz                               sc.match_to_catalog_sky
sc.barycentrictrueecliptic             sc.name
sc.cartesian                           sc.ndim
sc.cirs                                sc.obsgeoloc
sc.copy                                sc.obsgeovel
sc.data                                sc.obstime
sc.dec                                 sc.obswl
sc.default_representation              sc.position_angle
sc.diagonal                            sc.precessedgeocentric
sc.distance                            sc.pressure
sc.equinox                             sc.ra
sc.fk4                                 sc.ravel
sc.fk4noeterms                         sc.realize_frame
sc.fk5                                 sc.relative_humidity
sc.flatten                             sc.represent_as
sc.frame                               sc.representation
sc.frame_attributes                    sc.representation_component_names
sc.frame_specific_representation_info  sc.representation_component_units
sc.from_name                           sc.representation_info
sc.from_pixel                          sc.reshape
sc.galactic                            sc.roll
sc.galactocentric                      sc.search_around_3d
sc.galcen_dec                          sc.search_around_sky
sc.galcen_distance                     sc.separation
sc.galcen_ra                           sc.separation_3d
sc.gcrs                                sc.shape
sc.geocentrictrueecliptic              sc.size
sc.get_constellation                   sc.skyoffset_frame
sc.get_frame_attr_names                sc.spherical
sc.guess_from_table                    sc.spherical_offsets_to
sc.has_data                            sc.squeeze
sc.hcrs                                sc.supergalactic
sc.heliocentrictrueecliptic            sc.swapaxes
sc.icrs                                sc.take
sc.info                                sc.temperature
sc.is_equivalent_frame                 sc.to_pixel
sc.is_frame_attr_default               sc.to_string
sc.is_transformable_to                 sc.transform_to
sc.isscalar                            sc.transpose
sc.itrs                                sc.z_sun
sc.location

Here we see many attributes and methods, the most recognizable may be the longitude and latitude attributes which are named ra and dec for the ICRS frame:

>>> sc.ra  
<Longitude 1. deg>
>>> sc.dec  
<Latitude 2. deg>

Next notice that all the built-in frame names icrs, galactic, fk5 fk4, and fk4noeterms are there. Through the magic of Python properties, accessing these attributes calls the object transform_to method appropriately and returns a new SkyCoord object in the requested frame:

>>> sc_gal = sc.galactic
>>> sc_gal  
<SkyCoord (Galactic): (l, b) in deg
    (99.63785528, -58.70969293)>

Other attributes you should recognize are distance, equinox, obstime, shape.

Digging deeper¶

[Casual users can skip this section]

After transforming to Galactic the longitude and latitude values are now labeled l and b, following the normal convention for Galactic coordinates. How does the object know what to call its values? The answer lies in some less-obvious attributes:

>>> sc_gal.representation_component_names
OrderedDict([('l', 'lon'), ('b', 'lat'), ('distance', 'distance')])

>>> sc_gal.representation_component_units
OrderedDict([('l', Unit("deg")), ('b', Unit("deg"))])

>>> sc_gal.representation_type
<class 'astropy.coordinates.representation.SphericalRepresentation'>

Together these tell the object that l and b are the longitude and latitude, and that they should both be displayed in units of degrees as a spherical-type coordinate (and not, e.g. a cartesian coordinate). Furthermore the frame’s representation_component_names attribute defines the coordinate keyword arguments that SkyCoord will accept.

Another important attribute is frame_attr_names, which defines the additional attributes that are required to fully define the frame:

>>> sc_fk4 = SkyCoord(1, 2, frame='fk4', unit='deg')
>>> sc_fk4.get_frame_attr_names()
OrderedDict([('equinox', <Time object: scale='tai' format='byear_str' value=B1950.000>), ('obstime', None)])

The key values correspond to the defaults if no explicit value is provide by the user. This example shows that the FK4 frame has two attributes equinox and obstime that are required to fully define the frame.

Some trickery is happening here because many of these attributes are actually owned by the underlying coordinate frame object which does much of the real work. This is the middle layer in the three-tiered system of objects: representation (spherical, cartesian, etc.), frame (aka low-level frame class), and SkyCoord (aka high-level class; see Overview of astropy.coordinates concepts and Important Definitions):

>>> sc.frame  
<ICRS Coordinate: (ra, dec) in deg
    (1., 2.)>

>>> sc.has_data is sc.frame.has_data
True

>>> sc.frame.<TAB>  
sc.frame.T                                   sc.frame.ra
sc.frame.cartesian                           sc.frame.ravel
sc.frame.copy                                sc.frame.realize_frame
sc.frame.data                                sc.frame.represent_as
sc.frame.dec                                 sc.frame.representation
sc.frame.default_representation              sc.frame.representation_component_names
sc.frame.diagonal                            sc.frame.representation_component_units
sc.frame.distance                            sc.frame.representation_info
sc.frame.flatten                             sc.frame.reshape
sc.frame.frame_attributes                    sc.frame.separation
sc.frame.frame_specific_representation_info  sc.frame.separation_3d
sc.frame.get_frame_attr_names                sc.frame.shape
sc.frame.has_data                            sc.frame.size
sc.frame.is_equivalent_frame                 sc.frame.spherical
sc.frame.is_frame_attr_default               sc.frame.squeeze
sc.frame.is_transformable_to                 sc.frame.swapaxes
sc.frame.isscalar                            sc.frame.take
sc.frame.name                                sc.frame.transform_to
sc.frame.ndim                                sc.frame.transpose

>>> sc.frame.name
'icrs'

The SkyCoord object exposes the frame object attributes as its own. Though it might seem a tad confusing at first, this a good thing because it makes SkyCoord objects and BaseCoordinateFrame objects behave very similarly and most routines can accept either one as input without much bother (duck typing!).

The lowest layer in the stack is the abstract UnitSphericalRepresentation object:

>>> sc_gal.frame.data  # doctest: +FLOAT_CMP
<UnitSphericalRepresentation (lon, lat) in rad
    (1.73900863, -1.02467744)>

Transformations¶

The topic of transformations is covered in detail in the section on Transforming Between Systems.

For completeness here we will give some simple examples. Once you’ve defined your coordinates and the reference frame, you can transform from that frame to another frame. You can do this a few different ways: if you just want the default version of that frame, you can use attribute-style access (as mentioned previously). For more control, you can use the transform_to method, which accepts a frame name, frame class, frame instance, or SkyCoord:

>>> from astropy.coordinates import FK5
>>> sc = SkyCoord(1, 2, frame='icrs', unit='deg')
>>> sc.galactic  
<SkyCoord (Galactic): (l, b) in deg
    (99.63785528, -58.70969293)>

>>> sc.transform_to('fk5')  # Same as sc.fk5 and sc.transform_to(FK5)  
<SkyCoord (FK5: equinox=J2000.000): (ra, dec) in deg
        (1.00000656, 2.00000243)>

>>> sc.transform_to(FK5(equinox='J1975'))  # Transform to FK5 with a different equinox  
<SkyCoord (FK5: equinox=J1975.000): (ra, dec) in deg
        (0.67967282, 1.86083014)>

Transforming to a SkyCoord instance is an easy way of ensuring that two coordinates are in the exact same reference frame:

>>> sc2 = SkyCoord(3, 4, frame='fk4', unit='deg', obstime='J1978.123', equinox='B1960.0')
>>> sc.transform_to(sc2)  
<SkyCoord (FK4: equinox=B1960.000, obstime=J1978.123): (ra, dec) in deg
    (0.48726331, 1.77731617)>

Representations¶

So far we have been using a spherical coordinate representation in the all the examples, and this is the default for the built-in frames. Frequently it is convenient to initialize or work with a coordinate using a different representation such as cartesian or cylindrical. In this section we discuss how to initialize an object using a different representation and how to change the representation of an object. For more information about representation objects themselves see Using and Designing Coordinate Representations.

Initialization¶

Most of what you need to know can be inferred from the examples below and by extrapolating the previous documentation for spherical representations. Initialization just requires setting the representation_type keyword and supplying the corresponding components for that representation:

>>> c = SkyCoord(x=1, y=2, z=3, unit='kpc', representation_type='cartesian')
>>> c  
<SkyCoord (ICRS): (x, y, z) in kpc
    (1., 2., 3.)>
>>> c.x, c.y, c.z  
(<Quantity 1. kpc>, <Quantity 2. kpc>, <Quantity 3. kpc>)

Other variations include:

>>> SkyCoord(1, 2*u.deg, 3, representation_type='cylindrical')  
<SkyCoord (ICRS): (rho, phi, z) in (, deg, )
    (1., 2., 3.)>

>>> SkyCoord(rho=1*u.km, phi=2*u.deg, z=3*u.m, representation_type='cylindrical')  
<SkyCoord (ICRS): (rho, phi, z) in (km, deg, m)
    (1., 2., 3.)>

>>> SkyCoord(rho=1, phi=2, z=3, unit=(u.km, u.deg, u.m), representation_type='cylindrical')  
<SkyCoord (ICRS): (rho, phi, z) in (km, deg, m)
    (1., 2., 3.)>

>>> SkyCoord(1, 2, 3, unit=(None, u.deg, None), representation_type='cylindrical')  
<SkyCoord (ICRS): (rho, phi, z) in (, deg, )
    (1., 2., 3.)>

In general terms, the allowed syntax is as follows:

SkyCoord(COORD, [FRAME | frame=FRAME], [unit=UNIT], [representation_type=REPRESENTATION],
         keyword_args ...)
SkyCoord(COMP1, COMP2, [COMP3], [FRAME | frame=FRAME], [unit=UNIT],
         [representation_type=REPRESENTATION], keyword_args ...)
SkyCoord([FRAME | frame=FRAME], <comp1_name>=COMP1, <comp2_name>=COMP2,
         <comp3_name>=COMP3, [representation_type=REPRESENTATION], [unit=UNIT],
         keyword_args ...)

In this case the keyword_args now includes the element representation_type=REPRESENTATION. In the above description, elements in all capital letters (e.g. FRAME) describes a user input of that element type. Elements in square brackets are optional.

COMP1, COMP2, COMP3

Component values can be specified as separate positional arguments or as keyword arguments. In this formalism the exact types of allowed input depend on the details of the representation. In general the following input forms are supported:

Single value:
- Component class object
- Plain numeric value with unit keyword specifying the unit
List or component class array or numpy array of values

Each representation component has a specified class (the “component class”) which is used to convert generic input data into a pre-defined object class with a certain unit. These component classes are expected to be subclasses of the Quantity class.

COORD

This input form uses a single object to supply coordinate data. The coordinate can specify one or more coordinate positions as follows:

List of (COMP1, .., COMP<M>) tuples, where each component is a scalar (not array) and there are M components in the representation. Typically there are 3 components, but some (e.g. UnitSphericalRepresentation) can have fewer.
N x M numpy or Quantity array of values, where N is the number of coordinates and M is the number of components.

REPRESENTATION

The representation can be supplied either as a BaseRepresentation class (e.g. CartesianRepresentation or as a string name that is simply the class name in lower case without the 'representation' suffix (e.g. 'cartesian').

The rest of the inputs for creating a SkyCoord object in the general case are the same as for spherical.

Details¶

The available set of representations is dynamic and may change depending what representation classes have been defined. The built-in representations are:

Name	Class
`spherical`	`SphericalRepresentation`
`unitspherical`	`UnitSphericalRepresentation`
`physicsspherical`	`PhysicsSphericalRepresentation`
`cartesian`	`CartesianRepresentation`
`cylindrical`	`CylindricalRepresentation`

Each frame knows about all the available representations, but different frames may use different names for the same components. A common example is that the Galactic frame uses l and b instead of ra and dec for the lon and lat components of the SphericalRepresentation.

For a particular frame, in order to see the full list of representations and how it names all the components, first make an instance of that frame without any data, and then print the representation_info property:

>>> ICRS().representation_info  
{astropy.coordinates.representation.CartesianRepresentation:
  {'names': ('x', 'y', 'z'),
   'units': (None, None, None)},
 astropy.coordinates.representation.SphericalRepresentation:
  {'names': ('ra', 'dec', 'distance'),
   'units': (Unit("deg"), Unit("deg"), None)},
 astropy.coordinates.representation.UnitSphericalRepresentation:
  {'names': ('ra', 'dec'),
   'units': (Unit("deg"), Unit("deg"))},
 astropy.coordinates.representation.PhysicsSphericalRepresentation:
  {'names': ('phi', 'theta', 'r'),
   'units': (Unit("deg"), Unit("deg"), None)},
 astropy.coordinates.representation.CylindricalRepresentation:
  {'names': ('rho', 'phi', 'z'),
   'units': (None, Unit("deg"), None)}
}

This is a bit messy but it shows that for each representation there is a dict with two keys:

names: defines how each component is named in that frame
units: defines the units of each component when output, where None means to not force a particular unit.

For a particular coordinate instance you can use the representation_type attribute in conjunction with the representation_component_names attribute to figure out what keywords are accepted by a particular class object. The former will be the representation class the system is expressed in (e.g., spherical for equatorial frames), and the latter will be a dictionary mapping names for that frame to the component name on the representation class:

>>> import astropy.units as u
>>> icrs = ICRS(1*u.deg, 2*u.deg)
>>> icrs.representation_type
<class 'astropy.coordinates.representation.SphericalRepresentation'>
>>> icrs.representation_component_names
OrderedDict([('ra', 'lon'), ('dec', 'lat'), ('distance', 'distance')])

Changing representation¶

The representation of the coordinate object can be changed, as shown below. This actually does nothing to the object internal data which stores the coordinate values, but it changes the external view of that data in two ways:

The object prints itself in accord with the new representation.
The available attributes change to match those of the new representation (e.g. from ra, dec, distance to x, y, z).

Setting the representation_type thus changes a property of the object (how it appears) without changing the intrinsic object itself which represents a point in 3d space:

>>> c = SkyCoord(x=1, y=2, z=3, unit='kpc', representation_type='cartesian')
>>> c  
<SkyCoord (ICRS): (x, y, z) in kpc
    (1., 2., 3.)>

>>> c.representation_type = 'cylindrical'
>>> c  
<SkyCoord (ICRS): (rho, phi, z) in (kpc, deg, kpc)
    (2.23606798, 63.43494882, 3.)>
>>> c.phi.to(u.deg)  
<Angle 63.43494882 deg>
>>> c.x
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
AttributeError: 'SkyCoord' object has no attribute 'x'

>>> c.representation_type = 'spherical'
>>> c  
<SkyCoord (ICRS): (ra, dec, distance) in (deg, deg, kpc)
    (63.43494882, 53.3007748, 3.74165739)>

>>> c.representation_type = 'unitspherical'
>>> c  
<SkyCoord (ICRS): (ra, dec) in deg
    (63.43494882, 53.3007748)>

You can also use any representation class to set the representation:

>>> from astropy.coordinates import CartesianRepresentation
>>> c.representation_type = CartesianRepresentation

Note that if all you want is a particular representation without changing the state of the SkyCoord object, you should instead use the astropy.coordinates.SkyCoord.represent_as() method:

>>> c.representation_type = 'spherical'
>>> cart = c.represent_as(CartesianRepresentation)
>>> cart  
<CartesianRepresentation (x, y, z) in kpc
    (1., 2., 3.)>
>>> c.representation_type
<class 'astropy.coordinates.representation.SphericalRepresentation'>

Example 1: Plotting random data in Aitoff projection¶

This is an example how to make a plot in the Aitoff projection using data in a SkyCoord object. Here a randomly generated data set will be used.

First we need to import the required packages. We use matplotlib here for plotting and numpy to get the value of pi and to generate our random data.

>>> from astropy import units as u
>>> from astropy.coordinates import SkyCoord
>>> import numpy as np

We now generate random data for visualization. For RA this is done in the range of 0 and 360 degrees (ra_random), for DEC between -90 and +90 degrees (dec_random). Finally, we multiply these values by degrees to get an Quantity with units of degrees.

>>> ra_random = np.random.rand(100)*360.0 * u.degree
>>> dec_random = (np.random.rand(100)*180.0-90.0) * u.degree

As next step, those coordinates are transformed into an astropy.coordinates SkyCoord object.

>>> c = SkyCoord(ra=ra_random, dec=dec_random, frame='icrs')

Because matplotlib needs the coordinates in radians and between \(-\pi\) and \(\pi\), not 0 and \(2\pi\), we have to convert them. For this purpose the astropy.coordinates.Angle object provides a special method, which we use here to wrap at 180:

>>> ra_rad = c.ra.wrap_at(180 * u.deg).radian
>>> dec_rad = c.dec.radian

As last step we set up the plotting environment with matplotlib using the Aitoff projection with a specific title, a grid, filled circles as markers with a markersize of 2 and an alpha value of 0.3. We use a figure with an x-y ratio that is well suited for such a projection and we move the title upwards from its usual position to avoid overlap with the axis labels.

>>> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
>>> plt.figure(figsize=(8,4.2))
>>> plt.subplot(111, projection="aitoff")
>>> plt.title("Aitoff projection of our random data")
>>> plt.grid(True)
>>> plt.plot(ra_rad, dec_rad, 'o', markersize=2, alpha=0.3)
>>> plt.subplots_adjust(top=0.95,bottom=0.0)
>>> plt.show()

()

Example 2: Plotting star positions in bulge and disk¶

This is more realistic example how to make a plot in the Aitoff projection using data in a SkyCoord object. Here a randomly generated data set (multivariate normal distribution) for both stars in the bulge and in the disk of a galaxy will be used. Both types will be plotted with different number counts.

As in the last example, we first import the required packages.

>>> from astropy import units as u
>>> from astropy.coordinates import SkyCoord
>>> import numpy as np

We now generate random data for visualization using numpy.random.multivariate_normal.

>>> disk = np.random.multivariate_normal(mean=[0,0,0], cov=np.diag([1,1,0.5]), size=5000)
>>> bulge = np.random.multivariate_normal(mean=[0,0,0], cov=np.diag([1,1,1]), size=500)
>>> galaxy = np.concatenate([disk, bulge])