What’s New in sunpy 5.0?#

The SunPy project is pleased to announce the 5.0 release of the sunpy core package.

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

sunpy 5.0 also includes a large number of smaller improvements and bug fixes, which are described in the Full Changelog.

This release of sunpy contains 1279 commits in 182 merged pull requests closing 115 issues from 36 people, 21 of which are first-time contributors.

  • 1279 commits have been added since 4.1

  • 115 issues have been closed since 4.1

  • 182 pull requests have been merged since 4.1

  • 36 people have contributed since 4.1

  • 21 of which are new contributors

The people who have contributed to the code for this release are:

  • Akash Verma

  • Akhoury Shauryam *

  • Akshit Tyagi *

  • Alasdair Wilson

  • Albert Y. Shih

  • Ansh Dixit *

  • Aritra Sinha *

  • Aryan Shukla *

  • Conor MacBride

  • Daniel Garcia Briseno

  • David Stansby

  • Ed Behn *

  • Jan Gieseler

  • Krish Agrawal

  • Laura Hayes

  • Lazar Zivadinovic

  • Marius Giger *

  • Matt Wentzel-Long *

  • Nabil Freij

  • Naveen Srinivasan *

  • Nick Murphy

  • Nischal Singh *

  • OussCHE *

  • Stuart Mumford

  • Suleiman Farah *

  • Syed Md Mihan Chistie *

  • Tan Jia Qing *

  • Timo Laitinen *

  • Will Barnes

  • William Jamieson *

  • ejm4567 *

  • pradeep *

  • ryuusama *

  • tal66 *

Where a * indicates that this release contains their first contribution to sunpy.

Updates to minimum dependencies#

The minimum required versions of several core dependencies have been updated:

  • Python 3.9

  • astropy 5.0.1

  • numpy 1.21.0

  • parfive 2.0.0

We are aware the change in the parfive minimum version is a release earlier than our dependency policy allows for. However, due to significant issues that parfive v2.0.0 solves and changes to remote servers, we have decided to increase it to improve the user experience when downloading files.

The minimum required versions of these optional dependencies has also been updated:

  • Matplotlib 3.5.0

  • dask 2021.4.0

  • h5netcdf 0.11.0

  • pandas 1.2.0

  • scikit-image 0.18.0

  • scipy 1.7.0

  • cdflib 0.3.20

New documentation structure#

There has been a major overhaul of the documentation structure. The documentation is now organised into four major distinct sections:

  • Tutorial, a step-by-step introduction to sunpy.

  • How-To Guides, a set of small self-contained guides for getting specific tasks done.

  • Topic Guides, in-depth explanations that detail how and why different parts of sunpy work.

  • Reference, a listing of the contents of the sunpy package.

OS agnostic packaging#

A pure Python sunpy distribution is now published on PyPI with each release. This distribution contains all the functionality of sunpy apart from the code for reading ANA files. pip will default to installing the pure Python distribution instead of the source distribution on platforms other than Linux (x86-64) and macOS (x86-64 and ARM64). This should mean simpler and faster installs on such platforms, which include the Raspberry Pi as well as some cloud computing services.

Getting pixels along a coordinate path#

A new function, sunpy.map.pixelate_coord_path(), has been added to return all pixels that are intersected by a given coordinate path. This replaces the now-deprected sunpy.map.extract_along_coord. See the following pages for examples of how to use pixelate_coord_path(),

Extracting intensity of a map along a line

Extracting intensity of a map along a line

Drawing and using a Great Arc

Drawing and using a Great Arc

1 minute GOES data now available#

Searching for GOES data now returns 1 minute averaged data in addition to the high-cadence data for GOES 13-17. As with all Fido clients, the results of a search will return all available data. For example, searching over a single day will provide multiple results for the different satellites available and the different resolution data. This can be seen in the Resolution column below. Here, the flx1s refers to the high-cadence 1s data and the avg1m refers to the averaged 1 minute sampling data. In the past, sunpy only provided a search over the high-cadence data.

>>> from sunpy.net import Fido, attrs as a
>>> res = Fido.search(a.Time("2022-02-15", "2022-02-15"),
...                   a.Instrument("XRS"))  
>>> res  
<sunpy.net.fido_factory.UnifiedResponse object at ...>
Results from 1 Provider:

4 Results from the XRSClient:
Source: <8: https://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/goes/fits
8-15: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/goes-space-environment-monitor/access/science/
16-17: https://data.ngdc.noaa.gov/platforms/solar-space-observing-satellites/goes/

       Start Time               End Time        ... Provider Resolution
----------------------- ----------------------- ... -------- ----------
2022-02-15 00:00:00.000 2022-02-15 23:59:59.999 ...     NOAA      flx1s
2022-02-15 00:00:00.000 2022-02-15 23:59:59.999 ...     NOAA      avg1m
2022-02-15 00:00:00.000 2022-02-15 23:59:59.999 ...     NOAA      flx1s
2022-02-15 00:00:00.000 2022-02-15 23:59:59.999 ...     NOAA      avg1m

If you want to download just the 1 minute data, you can do so by specifying the resolution in the query by passing the a.Resolution attribute. If you want the 1s resolution data, you would instead pass a.Resolution("flx1s") instead.

>>> res = Fido.search(a.Time("2022-02-15", "2022-02-15"),
...                   a.Instrument("XRS"), a.Resolution("avg1m"))  
>>> res  
<sunpy.net.fido_factory.UnifiedResponse object at ...>
Results from 1 Provider:

2 Results from the XRSClient:
Source: <8: https://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/goes/fits
8-15: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/goes-space-environment-monitor/access/science/
16-17: https://data.ngdc.noaa.gov/platforms/solar-space-observing-satellites/goes/

       Start Time               End Time        ... Provider Resolution
----------------------- ----------------------- ... -------- ----------
2022-02-15 00:00:00.000 2022-02-15 23:59:59.999 ...     NOAA      avg1m
2022-02-15 00:00:00.000 2022-02-15 23:59:59.999 ...     NOAA      avg1m

sunpy.database deprecation#

The sunpy.database module is no longer actively maintained and has a number of outstanding issues. It has now been formally deprecated, and will be removed in sunpy 6.0. If you are using sunpy.database and would like to see a replacement, please join the discussion thread at https://community.openastronomy.org/t/deprecating-sunpy-database/495.

Deprecation of IO readers#

sunpy.io.cdf, sunpy.io.file_tools and sunpy.io.jp2 sub-modules have been deprecated, and will be removed in version 5.1.

These are designed for internal use only, and removing them from the public API gives the developers more flexibility to modify them without impacting users.