astropy / astropy/astroplan

Add night sky brightness calculator

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#29 5 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
enhancement help wanted
Dominant language
Python
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

This is similar to #27 by @ejeschke, but I'm making a new issue because what I propose here is a larger and probably post-GSoC project.

What really matters for observing is the night-sky brightness in the target direction, not just the moon phase or separation to the moon.

There's models for the contribution from scattered moonlight:
- http://labs.adsabs.harvard.edu/adsabsadsabs/abs/1991PASP..103.1033K/
- http://labs.adsabs.harvard.edu/adsabsadsabs/abs/2001MNRAS.322..201B/
- http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/eelt/science/drm/tech_data/background/

It would be great to have some night sky brightness calculator implemented in astroplan.
I don't know if there's a really simple model that can be implemented in a day, or if they are all complex.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

Start with issue #27 and the three cited scattered-moonlight models; no source file, test, or entry point is named here, so first determine which model and calculator scope astroplan should support. Done means an agreed night-sky-brightness calculation for a target direction is implemented and validated, with tests covering the chosen model.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
backend
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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