CALLHORIZONS - a Python Interface to JPL HORIZONS

Please note that CALLHORIZONS is not maintained anymore. Please use [astroquery.jplhorizons](http://astroquery.readthedocs.io/en/latest/jplhorizons/jplhorizons.html) instead, which will be maintained in the future and offers additional functionality. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Overview

This module provides a convenient python interface to the JPL HORIZONS system by directly accessing and parsing the http website. Ephemerides can be obtained through get_ephemerides, orbital elements through get_elements. Function export2pyephem provides a convenient interface to the PyEphem module that allows for ephemerides calculations on your machine.

Installation

The easiest way is to install the module using pip:

pip install callhorizons

For other ways, see the documentation.

Documentation

The CALLHORIZONS documentation is available here.

Examples

• print RA and DEC of asteroid 433 Eros from Mauna Kea for two discrete dates:

  import callhorizons
  eros = callhorizons.query('Eros')
  eros.set_discreteepochs([2457446.177083, 2457446.182343])
  eros.get_ephemerides(568)
  print(eros['RA'], eros['DEC'])
  

For more examples, see the documentation.

License

This code is published under the MIT License. Feel free to use this code and modify it to your own needs. Please note that the code is provided as is, without any warranty (see LICENSE file for details).

Copyright (c) 2016 Michael Mommert

Contact

Feel free to contact me with your suggestions and comments!

michael.mommert (at) nau.edu

Changelog

• 2018-07-12: fix in http protocol, final version of callhorizons (v1.1)
• 2017-08-22: improved parse_asteroid function
• 2017-07-05: fixed KeyError for solar elongation of the Sun (thanks to Pavel!)
• 2017-05-05: removed the 15-epoch limit for ephemerides and element queries (thatnks to migueldvb!)
• 2017-02-07: better support for target name parsing (thanks to mkelley!)
• 2016-11-08: added ObsEclLon and ObsEclLat to get_ephemerides()
• 2016-11-06: implemented tests and Python 3.5 support, v1.0.2
• 2016-09-12: bugfix in get_elements, v1.0.1
• 2016-07-19: implemented query for non-asteroidal objects (planets and satellits), v1.0
• 2016-01-13: implemented function export2pyephem that exports orbital elements into a PyEphem object (requires PyEphem: http://rhodesmill.org/pyephem/)
• 2016-02-27: changed structure into class structure, created pip installer, v1.0