What’s New in SunPy 1.1?#

Overview#

The SunPy project is pleased to announce the 1.1 release of the sunpy package.

The headline changes in 1.1 are:

  • The coordinates subpackage now supports four additional coordinate frames (HCI, HEE, GSE, and GEI).

  • A new subpackage sunpy.data.data_manager has been added to support versioned data for functions and methods.

  • Support in sunpy.map and sunpy.net for the SUVI instrument on GOES satellites.

  • Initial support for WISPR data from Parker Solar Probe in sunpy.map.

  • The import times for sunpy and some subpackages are significantly shorter, with no loss of functionality.

On this page, you can read about some of the big changes in this release:

SunPy 1.1 also includes a large number of smaller improvements and bug fixes, which are described in the Full Changelog.

By the numbers:

  • 1137 commits have been added since 1.0

  • 106 issues have been closed since 1.0

  • 242 pull requests have been merged since 1.0

  • 24 people have contributed since 1.0

  • 10 new contributors

Supported versions of Python#

Like SunPy 1.0, 1.1 comes with support for Python versions 3.6, 3.7 and support for 3.8 has been added.

New coordinate frames#

The coordinates subpackage now supports four additional coordinate frames of interest to solar physics:

The following transformation graph illustrates how all of these coordinate frames can be transformed to any other frame in sunpy.coordinates or astropy.coordinates:

digraph { ICRS [label=ICRS] HCRS [label=HCRS] HeliocentricMeanEcliptic [label="Heliocentric Aries Ecliptic (HAE)"] HeliographicStonyhurst [label="Heliographic Stonyhurst (HGS)\nHeliocentric Earth Equatorial (HEEQ)"] HeliocentricEarthEcliptic [label="Heliocentric Earth Ecliptic (HEE)"] GeocentricEarthEquatorial [label="Geocentric Earth Equatorial (GEI)"] HeliographicCarrington [label="Heliographic Carrington (HGC)"] Heliocentric [label="Heliocentric Cartesian (HCC)"] HeliocentricInertial [label="Heliocentric Inertial (HCI)"] Helioprojective [label="Helioprojective Cartesian (HPC)"] GeocentricSolarEcliptic [label="Geocentric Solar Ecliptic (GSE)"] ICRS -> HCRS ICRS -> HeliocentricMeanEcliptic HCRS -> ICRS HCRS -> HeliographicStonyhurst HeliocentricMeanEcliptic -> ICRS HeliocentricMeanEcliptic -> HeliocentricEarthEcliptic HeliocentricMeanEcliptic -> GeocentricEarthEquatorial HeliographicStonyhurst -> HeliographicCarrington HeliographicStonyhurst -> Heliocentric HeliographicStonyhurst -> HCRS HeliographicStonyhurst -> HeliocentricInertial HeliographicCarrington -> HeliographicStonyhurst Heliocentric -> Helioprojective Heliocentric -> HeliographicStonyhurst Helioprojective -> Heliocentric HeliocentricEarthEcliptic -> HeliocentricMeanEcliptic HeliocentricEarthEcliptic -> GeocentricSolarEcliptic GeocentricSolarEcliptic -> HeliocentricEarthEcliptic HeliocentricInertial -> HeliographicStonyhurst GeocentricEarthEquatorial -> HeliocentricMeanEcliptic subgraph cluster_astropy { color=blue fontcolor=blue penwidth=2 label=<<b>Frames implemented in Astropy</b>> ICRS HCRS HeliocentricMeanEcliptic astropy [label="Other Astropy frames" shape=box3d style=filled] geocentric [label="Earth-centered frames\n(including GEO)" shape=box3d style=filled] astropy -> ICRS geocentric -> ICRS ICRS -> astropy ICRS -> geocentric } subgraph cluster_sunpy { color=crimson fontcolor=crimson penwidth=2 label=<<b>Frames implemented in SunPy</b>> Helioprojective Heliocentric HeliographicStonyhurst HeliographicCarrington subgraph cluster_sunpy11 { color=chocolate fontcolor=chocolate label=<<b>Added in SunPy 1.1</b>> HeliocentricInertial HeliocentricEarthEcliptic GeocentricSolarEcliptic GeocentricEarthEquatorial } } newrank=true }

See our coordinates documentation for a table of the currently supported coordinate systems and the corresponding frame classes.

Manager for Versioned Data Files#

SunPy 1.1 provides a data manager for versioning and caching remote files. The objective of this is to provide a way for data required for functions, such as instrument correction routines, to depend on non-local data in a reliable way. The data manager also guarantees that a specific version of the code uses a specific data file, with the ability for users to specify updated files.

This works by providing the URL of a remote file and a SHA256 hash to the sunpy.data.manager.require decorator which can be added to functions that require these specific data files from remote sources. If the specified hash does not match that of the remote version, an exception is raised to make the user aware of any changes on the remote server or corruption of local files. Additionally, sunpy.data.cache can be used to avoid re-downloading files that already exist on a user’s local machine, thus saving disk space and internet bandwidth.

Support for SUVI Data#

The Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) is a EUV instrument imaging the full disk of the Sun in six passbands, and is onboard the latest of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) missions. SUVIMap provides SunPy map support for loading SUVI FITS image data, and the SUVIClient adds support to search for SUVI data hosted by NOAA via Fido. It supports searching for wavelength, level of data (level 2 data which consists of stacked level 1b images and original level 1b files), as well as GOES satellite number (>= GOES 16).

Initial Support for WISPR Images#

Following the first data release from Parker Solar Probe, SunPy 1.1 supports loading WISPR imaging data into a GenericMap. Due to the complex projections in the WISPR data this involved changing the way sunpy converts FITS headers into astropy.wcs.WCS objects. It is expected that sunpy 2.0 will include more complete support for WISPR data.

A plot from SunPy of a WISPR level 3 file.

Speeding up import times#

We know that the initial import of sunpy or its subpackages can feel like it takes a long time, particularly on slower machines. Some of that import time can be the result of importing other modules or external packages that are required for specialized functionality that a user may not ever actually use. We have identified the most egregious cases and deferred those imports of dependencies to when they are actually needed. For example, the initial import of sunpy.map is now ~40% faster, with no loss of functionality. We will continue to look for ways to improve import times.

Notable Breaking Changes or Removed functionality#

  • Importing sunpy.timeseries no longer automatically imports Matplotlib. (#3376)

  • sunpy.timeseries.sources.NOAAIndicesTimeSeries.peek now checks that the type argument is a valid string, and raises a ValueError if it isn’t. (#3378)

  • Observer-based coordinate frames (Heliocentric and Helioprojective) no longer assume a default observer (Earth) if no observer is specified. These frames can now be used with no observer specified, but most transformations cannot be performed for such frames. This removal of a default observer only affects sunpy.coordinates, and has no impact on the default observer in sunpy.map. (#3388)

  • The colormap stored in SunPy’s Map subclasses (ie. map.plot_settings['cmap']) can now be colormap string instead of the full matplotlib.colors.Colormap object. To get the full Colormap object use the new attribute map.cmap. (#3412)

  • Fix a warning in sunpy.map.GenericMap.rotate where the truth value of an array was being calculated. This changes the behavior of rotate when the angle= parameter is not an Quantity object to raise TypeError rather than ValueError. (#3456)

  • Removed the step of repairing images (replacing non-finite entries with local mean) before coaligning them. The user is expected to do this themselves before coaligning images. If NaNs/non-finite entries are present, a warning is thrown. The function sunpy.image.coalignment.repair_image_nonfinite is deprecated. (#3287)

  • The method to convert a Helioprojective frame from 2D to 3D has been renamed from sunpy.coordinates.frames.Helioprojective.calculate_distance to make_3d. This method is not typically directly called by users. (#3389)

  • sunpy.visualization.animator.ImageAnimatorWCS is now deprecated in favour of sunpy.visualization.animator.ArrayAnimatorWCS. (#3407)

  • sunpy.cm has been moved to sunpy.visualization.colormaps and will be removed in a future version. (#3410)

Full Change Log#

To see a detailed list of all changes in version v1.1, including changes in API, please see the Full Changelog.