Usage of planet

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For up-to-date documentation on this function, please see the casaguide page for this function!

Ever wonder where a Solar System body is (or will be) in RA and Dec? Or how fast its coordinates are changing? Or what it's angular diameter is? This function contacts the JPL Horizons telnet server to get the position (either J2000 or apparent), rate, and angular size of any Solar System body. It returns a dictionary of:
  • data['directionRadians']
  • data['rateRadiansPerSecond']
  • data['angularDiameter']
If the date is not specified, today's date is assumed at 0:00 UT.

CASA <2>: au.planet(help=True)
Usage: au.planet(solarSystemBody, date, observatory='ALMA', verbose=False, beam='', mjd=None, useJPL=True, standard='Butler-JPL-Horizons 2010', subroutine=False, apparent=False)
  e.g. au.planet('Ceres', '2011-10-31 11:59:59')
It may require a few seconds to reach the JPL server.
Observatories can be specifed by JPL ID string, JPL ID integer, or by the following names:
  'VLA' (which will be converted to = '-5')
  'ALMA' (which will be converted to = '-7')
  'MAUNAKEA' (which will be converted to = '-80')
  'OVRO' (which will be converted to = '-81')
CASA <6>: info = au.planet('Ceres','2011-10-31 11:59:59')
Using observatory: -7 = ALMA
MJD= 55865.49999, MJDseconds = 4826779199.0
Confirmed Observatory name =  ALMA
J2000 Position: 23:31:57.784, -17:59:58.77, rate: -8.7425, 8.2733 arcsec/hr
Angular diameter = 0.585821 arcsec

CASA <7>: info
  Out[7]: 
{'angularDiameter': 0.58582100000000004,
 'directionRadians': [6.1608511429607438, -0.3141533172768885],
 'rateRadiansPerSecond': [-1.1773619443464896e-08, 1.1141682317299324e-08]}



-- Main.ToddHunter - 2011-10-07
Topic revision: r7 - 2012-08-28, ToddHunter
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