Skyfield astronomy library

Elegant astronomy for Python: positions and plotting of the Sun, Moon, planets, comets, and asteroids — all built with fast NumPy array operations.

[Skyfield astronomy library @skyfield_py]

Skyfield version 1.47 has just been released, with much faster rising, setting, and transit routines — that also don’t have any problem with locations in the high Arctic and Antarctic!

https://t.co/WPskgb6z7Z

[Skyfield astronomy library @skyfield_py]

Also, there's now an example in the Skyfield docs showing how to compute the rates at which a body’s position is changing—either as rates of change for RA and dec, or for altitude and azimuth:

https://t.co/vN5iy87QPD

[Skyfield astronomy library @skyfield_py]

Skyfield 1.44 has been released! There is now an easier way to build distance and velocity objects, the Hipparcos URL has been updated, and the internal ∆T table has been updated.

https://t.co/UHMdTOzDWP

[Skyfield astronomy library @skyfield_py]

Skyfield 1.39 is out! The Angle.dstr() and Angle.hstr() methods now accept a “format=” argument that lets callers override Skyfield’s default angle formatting and supply their own. For details, read:

https://t.co/fu0vu1ROSu

[Skyfield astronomy library @skyfield_py]

Skyfield 1.38 was released this weekend! The old ∆T tables have been replaced with splines from the latest research by Stephenson, Morrison, Hohenkerk, and Zawilski: https://t.co/EA0BY9DQwl

So, alt-az calculations for ancient and medieval dates should now be more accurate!

[Skyfield astronomy library @skyfield_py]

Skyfield 1.34 adds explicit support for the ITRS reference frame, polar motion, Sidereal Time, and the exact phase of the Moon. Read all the details here:

https://t.co/C0xmDncRWh

[Skyfield astronomy library @skyfield_py]

Skyfield 1.32 is out — featuring new routines for finding lunar eclipses, and for finding when an object transits your meridian overhead!

https://t.co/B60d8MJ3fj

[Skyfield astronomy library @skyfield_py]

Note that all recent Skyfield versions use the default:

load.timescale(builtin=True)

— in which case your program will not attempt a live download either way! Details:

https://t.co/XVsXjHrHrg
https://t.co/WqnZGk4TIu

Thanks to Dan Small for alerting us to the deadline. 2/2

[Skyfield astronomy library @skyfield_py]

Skyfield 1.31 was released earlier this week, with a big change:

Ahead of NASA’s shutdown of an FTP site at the end of this month, Skyfield now downloads leap second and ∆T data from the IERS instead. Happily, this also increases the data’s accuracy! 1/2

[Skyfield astronomy library @skyfield_py]

The sgp4 library that Skyfield uses for Earth satellites has just released 2.13, which now sets both `epochyr` and `epochdays` when you set up a satellite by hand with sgp4init().

Result? You can now successfully save such a satellite as a TLE!

https://t.co/6Vz8K58uh4

[Skyfield astronomy library @skyfield_py]

Skyfield 1.27 is out! Highlights include a time attribute “.J” that returns floating point Julian years, and a slate of “strftime” methods for the timescales TAI, TT, TDB, and UT1.

https://t.co/sHDzMD8jit

[Skyfield astronomy library @skyfield_py]

Skyfield 1.26 no longer decides your timescale files are out of date and risks a network failure by trying to download new ones! Instead, you are given to the tools to check whether they are up-to-date:

https://t.co/QmMPQ3TmQN

[Skyfield astronomy library @skyfield_py]

We released a new Skyfield version 1.10 last week — with a fix for the change in how the Naval Observatory’s essential “deltat.preds” file is formatted. If you see an error, simply upgrade!

https://t.co/9F9MzNYBuE