Changelog

0.5.0

Changes to outputted maps

This release largely sees a transition to leveraging Sunpy Map objects. As such, the following changes have been made:

pfsspy.Input now must take a sunpy.map.GenericMap as an input boundary condition (as opposed to a numpy array). To convert a numpy array to a GenericMap, the helper function pfsspy.carr_cea_wcs_header() can be used:

map_date = datetime(...)
br = np.array(...)
header = pfsspy.carr_cea_wcs_header(map_date, br.shape)

m = sunpy.map.Map((br, header))
pfss_input = pfsspy.Input(m, ...)

pfsspy.Output.source_surface_br now returns a GenericMap instead of an array. To get the data array use source_surface_br.data.

The new pfsspy.Output.source_surface_pils returns the coordinates of the polarity inversion lines on the source surface.

In favour of directly using the plotting functionality built into SunPy, the following plotting functionality has been removed:

  • pfsspy.Input.plot_input. Instead Input has a new map property, which returns a SunPy map, which can easily be plotted using sunpy.map.GenericMap.plot.

  • pfsspy.Output.plot_source_surface. A map of \(B_{r}\) on the source surface can now be obtained using pfsspy.Output.source_surface_br, which again returns a SunPy map.

  • pfsspy.Output.plot_pil. The coordinates of the polarity inversion lines on the source surface can now be obtained using pfsspy.Output.source_surface_pils, which can then be plotted using ax.plot_coord(pil[0]) etc. See the examples section for an example.

Specifying tracing seeds

In order to make specifying seeds easier, they must now be a SkyCoord object. The coordinates are internally transformed to the Carrington frame of the PFSS solution, and then traced.

This should make specifying coordinates easier, as lon/lat/r coordinates can be created using:

seeds = astropy.coordinates.SkyCoord(lon, lat, r, frame=output.coordinate_frame)

To convert from the old x, y, z array used for seeds, do:

r, lat, lon = pfsspy.coords.cart2sph
r = r * astropy.constants.R_sun
lat = (lat - np.pi / 2) * u.rad
lon = lon * u.rad

seeds = astropy.coordinates.SkyCoord(lon, lat, r, frame=output.coordinate_frame)

Note that the latitude must be in the range \([-\pi/2, \pi/2]\).

GONG and ADAPT map sources

pfsspy now comes with built in sunpy map sources for GONG and ADAPT synoptic maps, which automatically fix some non-compliant FITS header values. To use these, just import pfsspy and load the .FITS files as normal with sunpy.

Tracing seeds

pfsspy.tracing.Tracer no longer has a transform_seeds helper method, which has been replaced by coords_to_xyz and xyz_to_coords. These new methods convert between SkyCoord objects, and Cartesian xyz coordinates of the internal magnetic field grid.

0.4.3

  • Improved the error thrown when trying to use :class`pfsspy.tracing.FotranTracer` without the streamtracer module installed.

  • Fixed some layout issues in the documentation.

0.4.2

  • Fix a bug where :class`pfsspy.tracing.FotranTracer` would overwrite the magnetic field values in an Output each time it was used.

0.4.1

  • Reduced the default step size for the FortranTracer from 0.1 to 0.01 to give more resolved field lines by default.

0.4.0

New fortran field line tracer

pfsspy.tracing contains a new tracer, FortranTracer. This requires and uses the streamtracer package which does streamline tracing rapidly in python-wrapped fortran code. For large numbers of field lines this results in an ~50x speedup compared to the PythonTracer.

Changing existing code to use the new tracer is as easy as swapping out tracer = pfsspy.tracer.PythonTracer() for tracer = pfsspy.tracer.FortranTracer(). If you notice any issues with the new tracer, please report them at https://github.com/dstansby/pfsspy/issues.

Changes to field line objects

Changes to Output

  • pfsspy.Output.bg is now returned as a 4D array instead of three 3D arrays. The final index now indexes the vector components; see the docstring for more information.

0.3.2

  • Fixed a bug in pfsspy.FieldLine.is_open, where some open field lines were incorrectly calculated to be closed.

0.3.1

  • Fixed a bug that incorrectly set closed line field polarities to -1 or 1 (instead of the correct value of zero).

  • FieldLine.footpoints has been removed in favour of the new pfsspy.FieldLine.solar_footpoint and pfsspy.FieldLine.source_surface_footpoint. These each return a single footpoint. For a closed field line, see the API docs for further details on this.

  • pfsspy.FieldLines has been added, as a convenience class to store a collection of field lines. This means convenience attributes such as pfsspy.FieldLines.source_surface_feet can be used, and their values are cached greatly speeding up repeated use.

0.3.0

  • The API for doing magnetic field tracing has changed. The new pfsspy.tracing module contains Tracer classes that are used to perform the tracing. Code needs to be changed from:

    fline = output.trace(x0)

    to:

    tracer = pfsspy.tracing.PythonTracer()
tracer.trace(x0, output)
flines = tracer.xs

    Additionally x0 can be a 2D array that contains multiple seed points to trace, taking advantage of the parallelism of some solvers.

  • The pfsspy.FieldLine class no longer inherits from SkyCoord, but the SkyCoord coordinates are now stored in pfsspy.FieldLine.coords attribute.

  • pfsspy.FieldLine.expansion_factor now returns np.nan instead of None if the field line is closed.

  • pfsspy.FieldLine now has a ~pfsspy.FieldLine.footpoints attribute that returns the footpoint(s) of the field line.

0.2.0

  • pfsspy.Input and pfsspy.Output now take the optional keyword argument dtime, which stores the datetime on which the magnetic field measurements were made. This is then propagated to the obstime attribute of computed field lines, allowing them to be transformed in to coordinate systems other than Carrington frames.

  • pfsspy.FieldLine no longer overrrides the SkyCoord __init__; this should not matter to users, as FieldLine objects are constructed internally by calling pfsspy.Output.trace

0.1.5

  • Output.plot_source_surface now accepts keyword arguments that are given to Matplotlib to control the plotting of the source surface.

0.1.4

  • Added more explanatory comments to the examples

  • Corrected the dipole solution calculation

  • Added pfsspy.coords.sph2cart() to transform from spherical to cartesian coordinates.

0.1.3

  • pfsspy.Output.plot_pil now accepts keyword arguments that are given to Matplotlib to control the style of the contour.

  • pfsspy.FieldLine.expansion_factor is now cached, and is only calculated once if accessed multiple times.