The LAMBDA footprint library

This module overplots cosmological survey regions. The survey specifications are contained in footprint.cfg and rendered as markdown in footprint.md.

Required python libraries:

• Numpy
• Matplotlib
• Healpy
• Astropy (coordinate units, WCS)
• Scipy

The code runs in both Python 2 (checked on 2.7.10) and Python 3 (checked on 3.4.3). Astropy supports a range of coordinate specifications in the configuration file.

To add a new survey, feel free to fork and add survey rectangles and vertices to the configuration file, or email us that information. The configuration file format is described below. To add your own healpix file region to specify a survey, email us and we'll make the binary available on the LAMBDA website.

Contact: Nathan Miller ([email protected])

Overview

The examples directory contains several plotting scripts and an ipython notebook (rendered on github). The healpix regions are large binary files and are hosted on the LAMBDA website. The first time you run the code, these will be downloaded to the maps directory. Subsequently, the code will only update a region if its local checksum does not match the library.

There are many different options when plotting the survey footprints. You can plot using any projection that Healpy provides and use most of the options that these projections provide. The coordinate system of the background map and the coordinate system of the plot should be provided though they do have default values ('G' and 'C' respectively). The coordinate system of each survey in the configuration file is assumed to be in Equatorial coordinates, though if an input map is provided instead of using the definitions in the configuration file, a coordinate system should be provided.

The input colors can be any string understood by matplotlib or an rgb triplet. The plotted regions for single survey will have the same color but a varying alpha depending on the pixel value (survey depth).

A copy of the latest configuration file is additionally stored on LAMBDA and an option can be set to download the latest version of the configuration file every time the code is run.

Types of Configuration File Entries

There are several different ways to add surveys to the configuration file. Here we will go over all the different types. For each types I will list the different keys that must go in the configuration file for that entry. The regions are specified as strings in the standard astropy coordinate format.

Common Keys

These are keys that are common to all the different types of configuration file entries.

• coord : 'C', 'E', or 'G' describing the coordinate system of the input map or the coordinate system of the input values.
• instrument : Instrument with which this data comes from. Multiple entries can have the same instrument.
• survey_type : e.g. 'background', 'cmb', 'cmbpol', or 'lss'. Used to separate entries into different tables when we generate a markdown file listing all the entries in the configuration file.
• citation : Citation describing how we got our survey footprint for the given experiment. Possible entries include a link to a file that we got our data form or and link to a paper from which we pulled values.

Healpix File

This reads in a footprint stored as a Healpix file. If the file does not exist in the path specified when you initialize the class, it will attempt to download the file from LAMBDA

• handler : hpx_file
• file : filename of the file
• checksum : The MD5 checksum of the file. It the checksum does not match the checksum of the local file, it will attempt to download it from LAMBDA.

Disc

This generates a disc footprint given a location and radius for the disc.

• handler : disc
• center : The center of the disc in lon,lat in human readable form (i.e. 4h12m,-12d4m). Values must be separated by a comma
• radius : The radius of the disc in human readable form

Polygon

This generates a footprint given vertices of a polygon. There is no limit to the number of vertices, but the resulting polygon must be convex.

• handler : polygon
• vertex1, vertex2, ... : Lon,lat location of the vertex. The lon,lat values must be separated by a comma

Rectangle

This type generates a rectangle for the footprint. The rectangle is generated from a center point and a length of each side. The rectangle is always oriented along ra/dec lines. This will only look like a rectangle in a cartesian like projection where the x- and y-axes are ra/dec.

• handler : rectangle
• center : The center lon,lat of the rectangle.
• size : The length of the sides of the rectangle.

Combination

The last option is a combination option which combines the footprints of multiple other surveys listed in the configuration file. This is used so that a single survey can have multiple entries for different patches, so we can choose to plot a single patch or multiple patches without the code thinking they are different surveys. All component maps must have the same coordinate system because we just sum the Healpix maps together. Additionally, all combination maps are normalized to a maximum value of 1.

• handler : combination
• components : The names of the other entries in the configuration file that will be combined. Names must be separated by a comma.

Config File

The entries in the config file can be seen at https://github.com/nasa-lambda/cmb_footprint/blob/master/footprint_config.md or http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/toolbox/footprint/configfile.cfm. These pages are automatically generated by gen_footprint_md.py based on the entries in the configuration file and is an easier way of seeing what surveys are predefined.