Polycomp
This package provides a set of Python bindings to the libpolycomp library (https://github.com/ziotom78/libpolycomp), as well as a stand-alone program which can be used to compress/decompress FITS files into polycomp files (still FITS files in disguise).
This code has been indexed in the Astrophysics Source Code Library as [ascl:1604.002].
The paper Polycomp: efficient and configurable compression of astronomical timelines has been accepted by the Journal "Astronomy & Computing" (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ascom.2016.04.004). The preprint is available on arXiv.
Requirements
-
Either Python 2.7 or 3.4 will work
-
Libpolycomp (https://github.com/ziotom78/libpolycomp) must already be installed
-
The following Python libraries are required: - click (http://click.pocoo.org/5/); - numpy (http://www.numpy.org/); - Either astropy (version 0.4 or greater, http://www.astropy.org/) or
pyfits (http://www.stsci.edu/institute/software_hardware/pyfits). (The setup.py script installs Astropy.)
Note: Recent versions of NumPy (1.10) seem to be incompatible with PyFits 3.3: saving files will lead to strange assertion errors. NumPy 1.8.2 and PyFits 3.3 are fine.
Basic usage
To use the bindings in your code, simply import pypolycomp in your
project:
import pypolycomp
This package provides also a standalone program, polycomp. Use the
--help flag to get some help about how to use it:
$ polycomp --help
How to cite this library
If you use this library in your work, please cite the paper Polycomp: efficient and configurable compression of astronomical timelines (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ascom.2016.04.004):
@article{Tomasi201688,
title = "Polycomp: Efficient and configurable compression of astronomical timelines",
journal = "Astronomy and Computing",
volume = "16",
number = "",
pages = "88-98",
year = "2016",
issn = "2213-1337",
doi = "http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ascom.2016.04.004",
author = "M. Tomasi",
}
License
This code is released under the MIT license.
