An Introduction to sunraster¶
sunraster
is a free, open-source, SunPy-affiliated package that provides
tools to manipulate and visualize slit spectrograph data using the Python
programming language. The sunraster
classes link observations
with various forms of supporting data including: measurement
uncertainties; units; a data mask to mark pixels with
unreliable or unphysical data values; WCS (World Coordinate System)
transformations that describe the position, wavelengths and times
represented by the pixels; and general metadata. These classes also
provide methods for applying and removing exposure time corrections to/from
the observations. Moreover, because the data unit is linked
to the object, it is always obvious what unit(s) the data is in. This
saves scientists the hassle of performing important, but laborious and
repetitive data conversions and avoid confusion by always tracking the
unit(s) of the data through those conversions. This leads to more
efficient and accurate solar science.
The sunraster
classes inherit more fundamental functionalities from the
ndcube package. These include a powerful, generic slicing API (application
programmable interface) allowing users to manipulate the same data
object as though it were 3D (time, position along slit, wavelength) or
4D (raster scan number, slit step, position along slit, wavelength),
which is very useful when dealing with scanning slit-spectrograph data.
The API simultaneously slices not only the data, but the uncertainties,
data mask, and WCS transformations leading to faster and less
error-prone data analysis. The sunraster
classes also inherit the
ability to crop by real world coordinates — useful when locating a
region of interest using information from other observatories — and a
visualization suite which allows users to easily and intuitively
visually inspect their data.
This guide explains the capabilities offered by sunraster
and how to utilize them. It will describe the different data classes,
as well as how to install sunraster
, contact the development team, and
contribute to the package. sunraster
is open-source and
community-developed and we are always glad to welcome new contributors
and users.