[AstroPy] all-sky map

[Marshall Perrin]

On Apr 5, 2011, at 12:32 PM, Jonathan Slavin wrote:
> I'm looking for a way to plot an all-sky map of modeled data using a
> Hammer-Aitoff projection.  The way I've done this in IDL is to create a
> uniform x-y grid, translate that l, b using the proper conversion for an
> Aitoff projection and generate the data on that grid.  I then display
> the image and overlay an Aitoff grid (which I also generate).  So the
> image is rectangular and extends beyond the plot edges.  That is fine,
> but then all the labeling, etc. has to be done by hand.  Is there an
> easier way?  Any help would be appreciated.


Check out the matplotlib mpl_toolkits.basemap module.   The Basemap class implements a user-selectable map projection, and yields a callable object which handles the translation between projection coordinate systems and x,y positions for plotting.   Here is some code I recently wrote to do a similar task, plotting positions of objects on an all-sky Mollweide projection:

	# define base map class.
        map = Basemap(projection='moll', lat_0 = 0, lon_0 = 0,
                              resolution = None)  # do *NOT* draw Earth continents at any resolution!
        map.drawmapboundary()
        p.title("Equatorial coordinates J2000")

        # draw and label ra/dec grid lines every 30 degrees.
        degtoralabel = lambda deg : "%+d$^h$" % int(deg/15)
        degtodeclabel = lambda deg : "%+d$^\circ$" % deg
        map.drawparallels(n.arange(-90, 90, 30), fmt=degtodeclabel, labels=[1,0,0,0])
        map.drawmeridians(n.arange(0, 360, 30) )  # label these manually since I don't like the default label positions:
											# this also demonstrates how to overplot text on map coordinates...
        for h in [0,6,12,18]:
            x,y = map(h*15,0)
            p.text(x,y, degtoralabel(h*15))

	# draw data points
	px, py = map(data.radeg, data.dedeg)
	map.plot(px, py, "o", color="red")