Katpoint API and astropy integration options

katpoint.Antenna

These are the ways in which the MeerKAT telescope interacts with katpoint.Antenna (extracted from CAM / TM and SDP code):

Construction

• Antenna(string) - by far the most common way

• Antenna(string, float, float, float, float) - corner case in katcbfsim

• Antenna(string, string, string, string, float, tuple) - corner case in katcbfsim

• Antenna(string, float, float, float) - corner case in katsdpimager - replace by ref ant code?

Popular methods and attributes

• name

• description

• delay_model

• position_wgs84

• local_sidereal_time

katpoint.Target

These are the ways in which the MeerKAT telescope interacts with katpoint.Target (extracted from CAM / TM and SDP code):

Construction

• Target(string) - by far the most common way

• Target(body=string, antenna=Antenna) - corner case in katportalclient - easily fixed

Popular methods and attributes

• name

• description

• tags

• body_type

• separation

• radec

• azel

• parallactic_angle

• uvw_basis

Less popular methods

• astrometric_radec

• apparent_radec

• galactic

katpoint.Timestamp

These are the ways in which the MeerKAT telescope interacts with katpoint.Timestamp (extracted from CAM / TM and SDP code):

Construction

• Timestamp()

• Timestamp(float)

Popular methods and attributes

• secs

• local

• to_mjd

• to_string

Helper functions

These are popular helper functions called by MeerKAT code:

• deg2rad - obsolete if using astropy units

• rad2deg - obsolete if using astropy units

• lightspeed - obsolete if using astropy constants

• plane_to_sphere[] - astropy wcs

• construct_azel_target - replace with class method, e.g. Target.from_azel

• construct_radec_target - replace with class method, e.g. Target.from_radec

• wrap_angle

Less popular ones:

• ephem_extra.angle_from_degrees - obsolete if using astropy units

• lla_to_ecef - EarthLocation functionality

• ecef_to_lla - EarthLocation functionality

• ecef_to_enu - EarthLocation functionality

• azel_to_enu - EarthLocation functionality

• is_iterable

Problematic use cases

Problematic use cases of Target.body and Antenna.observer (assumes PyEphem features): * body.compute * observer.next_rising(body, time) * observer.next_setting(body, time) * ephem.separation - use Target.separation instead * ephem.degrees * ephem.hours