Adding information for Rubin Observatory into astropy so it can be used by astroplan

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#1

I’m trying to figure out what certain portions of the LSST footprint will be observable during Year 1 and astroplan/astropy does not have information for Rubin Observatory to be able to create elevation and airmass plots. from

from astropy.coordinates import EarthLocation
EarthLocation.get_site_names(refresh_cache=True)

I don’t see Rubin listed. I’m using v6.1.2 of astropy and 0.1 of astroplan. Is it possible for the CST to add this information into astropy via the instructions here? I believe @mjuric has provided similar values to the MPC for the Observatory code to be generated by the Minor Planet Center.

#2

Hmmm… Looks okay to me? Running that same snippet in a fresh environment with the same version of astropy gives at least

 ...
 'Cerro Pachon',
 ...,
 'Rubin',
 'Rubin AuxTel',
 'Rubin Observatory',
...,
 'rubin',
 'rubin_aux',

If you want to create a site manually, though, I think you can use:

rubin = EarthLocation.from_geocentric(1818939, -5208471, -3195171.4, unit='m')
#3

See also Rubin isn't a telescope · Issue #139 · astropy/astropy-data · GitHub

#4

Also we recently got the facility names updated at AAS at Facility Keywords - AAS Journals so that the facilities are called Rubin:Simonyi and Rubin:1.2m.

#5

Hi Meg - there are two posts (from Josh M. and Tim J.) below. Do those resolve your question?

#6

Thanks. Interesting because I did a fresh install twice in a brand new conda environment and it’s not coming up for me.

#7

I did some poking and had to delete my astropy cache manually a bunch of times to get it refresh. The Rubin position comes from 2013 and is from google maps. Are these the most accurate?

#8

Probably not. There is an official link below so maybe if it’s not someone can patch the data repo and also add Simonyi Survey Telescope so they can have the correct name in there.

https://noirlab.edu/science/programs/vera-c-rubin-observatory/simonyi-survey-telescope

#9

Looks like we have slightly more precise numbers at Key Numbers | Rubin Observatory

#10

AuxTel: Rubin Auxiliary Telescope (AuxTel) | NOIRLab | NOIRLab

#11

Hi again @mschwamb, I just wanted to check about whether or not you found a solution to your question (for example the two posts from Josh M. and Tim J.) Did those help come to a solution (in case it helps others running into the same issue?) And if not, is there more information you can provide that might help us answer the question? Thanks!

#12

That replies helped.
~Meg

#13

I will try to follow up on that Astropy data github issue at some point.