RadioAstronomySoftwareGroup / RadioAstronomySoftwareGroup/pyuvdata

Add support for standard healpix fits files

Open
#187 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

beams enhancement noncritical
Dominant language
Python
Stars
102
Forks
35
Avg merge
1d 20h
Merged PRs (30d)
14

Description

The standard healpix fits file format uses a binary table which by definition in FITS can only have 2 axes. What is currently implemented in beamfits.py uses image-type extensions which can have as many axes as needed.

Healpix files currently can contain all 4 polarizations only if they are ‘full sky’ images. If they are ‘cut sky’ images — meaning you only have some of the pixels, you need a column for the pixel index. And since healpix fits binary tables can only have up to 4 columns, that means you have to put each polarization in it’s own file.

So to convert to standard healpix FITS, each file or HDU can only be for a single frequency, pol and vector index. This can be accomplished with an export function in beamfits that uses select to break out parts of the beam and then put them in separate HDUs or files. Then to read them in we can use the add method.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reading beamfits.py and the existing select and add behavior. Trace how image-type extensions currently represent frequency, polarization, vector, and pixel data. Done means standard HEALPix FITS binary-table files can be exported as separate files or HDUs and read back by combining them with add; no tests are named in the issue.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
data
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.