Astra Viso 0.1.0 Release Notes
This release supports Python 3.4+
Highlights
The first release version of Astra Viso! The code is still relatively early in development but is stable and ready to use for basic applications.
Astra Viso is a full-featured toolset for simulating stars and unresolved space objects. With this software it is simple to set up a simulated sensor and begin generating imagery immediately. The tools allow the user to switch between a number of commonly-used internal modeling presets easily while also having the flexibility to override internal modeling with externally-defined functions.
Features
* WorldObject class to simulate position and attitude dynamics of sensors or objects of interest
* StarMap class to handle interfacing with an internal star catalog
* StarCam class to create simulated images of distant, unresolved objects
Use
Astra Viso contains some simple demo scripts to highlight the capabilities of the package. For information on available demos, check `help(astraviso.run_demo)`. To run the default demo, type
python
import astraviso
astraviso.run_demo()
Astra Viso is broken into 3 primary classes: StarCam, WorldObject, and StarMap. Each of these classes handles a portion of your interaction with the code. The WorldObject class describes the behavior of an object in inertial space. Any space object of interest can be a WorldObject. The StarMap class is a simple interface to manage star catalogs. Ultimately, the StarCam class manages simulating the physics of a CCD sensor and creating an image. The most simple Astra Viso program is
python
import astraviso as av
Create star camera instance
cam = av.StarCam()
Capture image starting at t=0 with an exposure time of 1 second
image = cam.snap(0, 1)
Display image using the internal tools
av.imageutils.imshow(image)
This code creates a default camera. The default star catalog is a randomly-generated set with 10,000 elements.