[AstroPy] visual magnitude and surface brightness from astropy/astroplan

[Eric LN Jensen]

Hi Marie, 

I think you can do this with the astroquery.jplhorizons package, https://astroquery.readthedocs.io/en/latest/jplhorizons/jplhorizons.html  

Something like this: 
from astroquery.jplhorizons import Horizons
# Use whatever location(s) and epoch(s) you need here: 
obj = Horizons(id=301, location='568', epochs=2458133.)
eph = obj.ephemerides()

print(eph.colnames)
['targetname', 'datetime_str', 'datetime_jd', 'solar_presence', 'flags', 'RA', 'DEC', 'RA_app', 'DEC_app', 'RA_rate', 'DEC_rate', 'AZ', 'EL', 'AZ_rate', 'EL_rate', 'sat_X', 'sat_Y', 'sat_PANG', 'siderealtime', 'airmass', 'magextinct', 'V', 'surfbright', 'illumination', 'illum_defect', 'sat_sep', 'sat_vis', 'ang_width', 'PDObsLon', 'PDObsLat', 'PDSunLon', 'PDSunLat', 'SubSol_ang', 'SubSol_dist', 'NPole_ang', 'NPole_dist', 'EclLon', 'EclLat', 'r', 'r_rate', 'delta', 'delta_rate', 'lighttime', 'vel_sun', 'vel_obs', 'elong', 'elongFlag', 'alpha', 'lunar_elong', 'lunar_illum', 'sat_alpha', 'sunTargetPA', 'velocityPA', 'OrbPlaneAng', 'constellation', 'TDB-UT', 'ObsEclLon', 'ObsEclLat', 'NPole_RA', 'NPole_DEC', 'GlxLon', 'GlxLat', 'solartime', 'earth_lighttime', 'RA_3sigma', 'DEC_3sigma', 'SMAA_3sigma', 'SMIA_3sigma', 'Theta_3sigma', 'Area_3sigma', 'RSS_3sigma', 'r_3sigma', 'r_rate_3sigma', 'SBand_3sigma', 'XBand_3sigma', 'DoppDelay_3sigma', 'true_anom', 'hour_angle', 'alpha_true', 'PABLon', 'PABLat']

print(eph['surfbright', 'V', 'illumination'])
  surfbright    V    illumination
mag / arcsec2  mag        %      
------------- ------ ------------
        6.344 -6.287      4.51195


Hope this helps, 

Eric

> On Apr 30, 2024, at 6:34 PM, <mroch at sdsu.edu> <mroch at sdsu.edu> wrote:
> 
> Dear All,
>  
> We had been using JPL’s Horizons and we replaced our solar ephemeris with astropy/astroplan (versions 5.8 and 0.8 respectively) which greatly increased our ephemeris throughput for biology applications (e.g., diel patterns and animal presence over a period of decades).  We would like to do something similar with lunar data.  Currently, we are using JPL’s visual magnitude and surface brightness measurement (quantity 9,  https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/manual.html). It is clear to me how to use astroplan to retrieve the percentage of the moon that is illuminated, but not the visual magnitude and surface brightness produced by JPL.  Looking at the astroplan source code, it does not appear that astroplan was designed for this and we may need to learn how to use astropy.  Any suggestions would be welcome.
>  
> Apologies if this is a trivial question; I am a scientist, but not an astronomer…
>  
> All my best,
> Marie
>  
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