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0.3 (unreleased)

New Features

  • astropy.io.votable
    • The format of the units of a VOTable file can be specified using the unit_format parameter. Note that units are still always written out using the CDS format, to ensure compatibility with the standard.
  • astropy.time
    • Add datetime format which allows converting to and from standard library datetime.datetime objects.
    • Add plot_date format which allows converting to and from the date representation used when plotting dates with matplotlib via the matplotlib.pyplot.plot_date function.
    • Add gps format (seconds since 1980-01-01 00:00:00 UTC, including leap seconds)
    • Add array indexing to Time objects [#1132]
    • Allow for arithmetic of multi-element and single-element Time and TimeDelta objects [#1081].
    • Allow multiplication and division of TimeDelta objects by constants and arrays, as well as changing sign (negation) and taking the absolute value of TimeDelta objects [#1082]
  • astropy.stats
    • Added robust statistics functions ~astropy.stats.funcs.median_absolute_deviation, ~astropy.stats.funcs.biweight_location, and ~astropy.stats.funcs.biweight_midvariance.
    • Add axis=int option to astropy.stats.funcs.sigma_clip to allow clipping along a given axis for multidimensional data. [#1083]
  • astropy.table
    • Table.read and Table.write now support reading and writing of FITS tables via the unified reading/writing interface [#591].
  • :ref:`astropy.vo <astropy_vo>`
    • New package added to support Virtual Observatory Simple Cone Search query and service validation [#552].

API Changes

  • astropy.io.ascii
    • In the read method of astropy.io.ascii, empty column values in an ASCII table are now treated as missing values instead of the previous treatment as a zero-length string "". This now corresponds to the behavior of other table readers like numpy.genfromtxt. To restore the previous behavior set fill_values=None in the call to ascii.read().
  • astropy.io.fits
    • The updateHeader, updateHeaderData, and updateCompressedData methods of the CompDataHDU class are pending deprecation and moved to internal methods. The operation of these methods depended too much on internal state to be used safely by users; instead they are invoked automatically in the appropriate places when reading/writing compressed image HDUs.
    • The CompDataHDU.compData attribute is pending deprecation in favor of the clearer and more PEP-8 compatible CompDataHDU.compressed_data.
    • The constructor for CompDataHDU has been changed to accept new keyword arguments. The new keyword arguments are essentially the same, but are in underscore_separated format rather than camelCase format. The old arguments are still pending deprecation.
    • The internal attributes of HDU classes _hdrLoc, _datLoc, and _datSpan have been replaced with _header_offset, _data_offset, and _data_size respectively. The old attribute names are still pending deprecation. This should only be of interest to advanced users who have created their own HDU subclasses.
    • The following previously deprecated functions and methods have been removed entirely: createCard, createCardFromString, upperKey, ColDefs.data, setExtensionNameCaseSensitive, _File.getfile, _TableBaseHDU.get_coldefs, Header.has_key, Header.ascardlist.
    • Interfaces that were pending deprecation are now fully deprecated. These include: create_card, create_card_from_string, upper_key, Header.get_history, and Header.get_comment.
  • astropy.stats.funcs
    • For sigma_clip, the maout optional parameter has been removed, and the function now always returns a masked array. A new boolean parameter copy can be used to indicated whether the input data should be copied (copy=True, default) or used by reference (copy=False) in the output masked array. [#1083]

Bug Fixes

  • astropy.io.ascii
    • The write() function was ignoring the fill_values argument (#910).

0.2.3 (unreleased)

Bug Fixes

  • astropy.time
    • Fixed inaccurate handling of leap seconds when converting from UTC to UNIX timestamps. [#1118]
    • Tightened required accuracy in many of the time conversion tests. [#1121]
  • Misc
    • Fixed a regression that was introduced in v0.2.2 by the fix to issue #992 that was preventing installation of Astropy affiliated packages that use Astropy's setup framework. [#1124]

0.2.2 (2013-05-21)

Bug Fixes

  • astropy.io
    • Fixed issues in both the fits and votable sub-packages where array byte order was not being handled consistently, leading to possible crashes espcially on big-endian systems. [#1003]
  • astropy.io.fits
    • When an error occurs opening a file in fitsdiff the exception message will now at least mention which file had the error.
    • Fixed a couple cases where creating a new table using TDIMn in some of the columns could cause a crash.
    • Slightly refactored how tables containing variable-length array columns are handled to add two improvements: Fixes an issue where accessing the data after a call to the astropy.io.fits.getdata convenience function caused an exception, and allows the VLA data to be read from an existing mmap of the FITS file.
    • Fixed a bug on Python 3 where attempting to open a non-existent file on Python 3 caused a seemingly unrelated traceback.
    • Fixed an issue in the tests that caused some tests to fail if Astropy is installed with read-only permissions.
    • Fixed a bug where instantiating a BinTableHDU from a numpy array containing boolean fields converted all the values to False.
    • Fixed an issue where passing an array of integers into the constructor of Column() when the column type is floats of the same byte width caused the column array to become garbled.
    • Fixed inconsistent behavior in creating CONTINUE cards from byte strings versus unicode strings in Python 2--CONTINUE cards can now be created properly from unicode strings (so long as they are convertable to ASCII).
    • Fixed a bug in parsing HIERARCH keywords that do not have a space after the first equals sign (before the value).
    • Prevented extra leading whitespace on HIERARCH keywords from being treated as part of the keyword.
    • Fixed a bug where HIERARCH keywords containing lower-case letters was mistakenly marked as invalid during header validation along with an ancillary issue where the Header.index() method id not work correctly with HIERARCH keywords containing lower-case letters.
    • Disallowed assigning NaN and Inf floating point values as header values, since the FITS standard does not define a way to represent them in. Because this is undefined, the previous behavior did not make sense and produced invalid FITS files. [#954]
    • Fixed an obscure issue that can occur on systems that don't have flush to memory-mapped files implemented (namely GNU Hurd). [#968]
    • Improved round-tripping and preservation of manually assigned column attributes (TNULLn, TSCALn, etc.) in table HDU headers. [#996]
  • astropy.io.votable
    • Stopped deprecation warnings from the astropy.io.votable package that could occur during setup. [#970]
    • Fixed an issue where INFO elements were being incorrectly dropped when occurring inside a TABLE element. [#1000]
    • Fixed obscure test failures on MIPS platforms. [#1010]
  • astropy.nddata.convolution
    • Fixed an issue in make_kernel() when using an Airy function kernel. Also removed the superfluous 'brickwall' option. [#939]
  • astropy.table
    • Fixed a crash that could occur when adding a row to an empty (rowless) table with masked columns. [#973]
    • Made it possible to assign to one table row from the value of another row, effictively making it easier to copy rows, for example. [#1019]
  • astropy.time
    • Added appropriate __copy__ and __deepcopy__ behavior; this omission caused a seemingly unrelated error in FK5 coordinate separation. [#891]
  • astropy.units
    • Fixed an issue where the isiterable() utility returned True for quantities with scalar values. Added an __iter__ method for the Quantity class and fixed isiterable() to catch false positives. [#878]
    • Fixed previously undefined behavior when multiplying a unit by a string. [#949]
    • Added 'time' as a physical type--this was a simple omission. [#959]
    • Fixed issues with pickling unit objects so as to play nicer with the multiprocessing module. [#974]
    • Made it more difficult to accidentally override existing units with a new unit of the same name. [#1070]
    • Added several more physical types and units that were previously omitted, including 'mass density', 'specific volume', 'molar volume', 'momentum', 'angular momentum', 'angular speed', 'angular acceleration', 'electric current', 'electric current density', 'electric field strength', 'electric flux density', 'electric charge density', 'permittivity', 'electromagnetic field strength', 'radiant intensity', 'data quantity', 'bandwidth'; and 'knots', 'nautical miles', 'becquerels', and 'curies' respectively. [#1072]
  • Misc
    • Fixed a permission error that could occur when running astropy.test() on Python 3 when Astropy is installed as root. [#811]
    • Made it easier to filter warnings from the convolve() function and from Quantity objects. [#853]
    • Fixed a crash that could occur in Python 3 when generation of the default config file fails during setup. [#952]
    • Fixed an unrelated error message that could occur when trying to import astropy from a source checkout without having build the extension modules first. This issue was claimed to be fixed in v0.2.1, but the fix itself had a bug. [#971]
    • Fixed a crash that could occur when running the build_sphinx setup command in Python 3. [#977]
    • Added a more helpful error message when trying to run the setup.py build_sphinx command when Sphinx is not installed. [#1027]
    • Minor documentation fixes and restructuring. [#935, #967, #978, #1004, #1028, #1047]

Other Changes and Additions

  • Some performance improvements to the astropy.units package, in particular improving the time it takes to import the sub-package. [#1015]

0.2.1 (2013-04-03)

Bug Fixes

  • astropy.coordinates
    • Fixed encoding errors that could occur when formatting coordinate objects in code using from __future__ import unicode_literals. [#817]
    • Fixed a bug where the minus sign was dropped when string formatting dms coordinates with -0 degrees. [#875]
  • astropy.io.fits
    • Properly supports the ZQUANTIZ keyword used to support quantization level--this includes working support for lossless GZIP compression of images.
    • Fixed support for opening gzipped FITS files in a writeable mode. [#256]
    • Added a more helpful exception message when trying to read invalid values from a table when the required TNULLn keyword is missing. [#309]
    • More refactoring of the tile compression handling to work around a potential memory access violation that was particularly prevalent on Windows. [#507]
    • Fixed an integer size mismatch in the compression module that could affect 32-bit systems. [#786]
    • Fixed malformatting of the TFORMn keywords when writing compressed image tables (they ommitted the max array length parameter from the variable-length array format).
    • Fixed a crash that could occur when writing a table containing multi- dimensional array columns from an existing file into a new file.
    • Fixed a bug in fitsdiff that reported two header keywords contaning NaN as having different values.
  • astropy.io.votable
    • Fixed links to the astropy.io.votable documentation in the VOTable validator output. [#806]
    • When reading VOTables containing integers that are out of range for their column type, display a warning rather than raising an exception. [#825]
    • Changed the default string format for floating point values for better round-tripping. [#856]
    • Fixed opening VOTables through the Table.read() interface for tables that have no names. [#927]
    • Fixed creation of VOTables from an Astropy table that does not have a data mask. [#928]
    • Minor documentation fixes. [#932]
  • astropy.nddata.convolution
    • Added better handling of inf values to the convolve_fft family of functions. [#893]
  • astropy.table
    • Fixed silent failure to assign values to a row on multiple columns. [#764]
    • Fixed various buggy behavior when viewing a table after sorting by one of its columns. [#829]
    • Fixed using numpy.where() with table indexing. [#838]
    • Fixed a bug where opening a remote table with Table.read() could cause the entire table to be downloaded twice. [#845]
    • Fixed a bug where MaskedColumn no longer worked if the column being masked is renamed. [#916]
  • astropy.units
    • Added missing capability for array Quantitys to be initializable by a list of Quantitys. [#835]
    • Fixed the definition of year and lightyear to be in terms of Julian year per the IAU definition. [#861]
    • "degree" was removed from the list of SI base units. [#863]
  • astropy.wcs
    • Fixed TypeError when calling WCS.to_header_string(). [#822]
  • Misc
    • Fixed a minor issue when installing with ./setup.py develop on a fresh git clone. This is likely only of interest to developers on Astropy. [#725]
    • Fixes a crash with ImportError: No module named 'astropy.version' when running setup.py from a source checkout for the first time on OSX with Python 3.3. [#820]
    • Fixed an installation issue where running ./setup.py install or when installing with pip the .astropy directory gets created in the home directory of the user running the command. The user's .astropy directory should only be created when they use astropy, not when they install it. [#867]
    • Fixed an exception when creating a ProgressBar with a "total" of 0. [#752]
    • Added better documentation of behavior that can occur when trying to import the astropy package from within a source checkout without first building the extension modules. [#795, #864]
    • Added link to the installation instructions in the README. [#797]
    • Catches segfaults in xmllint which can occur sometimes and is otherwise out of our control. [#803]
    • Minor changes to the documentation template. [#805]
    • Fixed a minor exception handling bug in download_file(). [#808]
    • Added cleanup of any temporary files if an error occurs in download_file(). [#857]
    • Filesystem free space is checked for before attempting to download a file with download_file(). [#858]
    • Fixed package data locating to work across symlinks--required to work with some OS packaging layouts. [#827]
    • Fixed a bug when building Cython extensions where hidden files containing .pyx extensions could cause the build to crash. This can be an issue with software and filesystems that autogenerate hidden files. [#834]
    • Fixed bug that could cause a "script" called README.rst to be installed in a bin directory. [#852]
    • Fixed some miscellaneous and mostly rare reference leaks caught by cpychecker. [#914]

Other Changes and Additions

  • Added logo and branding for Windows binary installers. [#741]
  • Upgraded included version libexpat to 2.1.0. [#781]
  • ~25% performance improvement in unit composition/decomposition. [#836]
  • Added previously missing LaTeX formatting for L_sun and R_sun. [#841]
  • ConfigurationItems now have a more useful and informative __repr__ and improved documentation for how to use them. [#855]
  • Added a friendlier error message when trying to import astropy from a source checkout without first building the extension modules inplace. [#864]
  • py.test now outputs more system information for help in debugging issues from users. [#869]
  • Added unit definitions "mas" and "uas" for "milliarcsecond" and "microarcsecond" respectively. [#892]

0.2 (2013-02-19)

New Features

This is a brief overview of the new features included in Astropy 0.2--please see the "What's New" section of the documentation for more details.

  • astropy.coordinates

    • This new subpackage contains a representation of celestial coordinates, and provides a wide range of related functionality. While fully-functional, it is a work in progress and parts of the API may change in subsequent releases.

  • astropy.cosmology

    • Update to include cosmologies with variable dark energy equations of state. (This introduces some API incompatibilities with the older Cosmology objects).
    • Added parameters for relativistic species (photons, neutrinos) to the astropy.cosmology classes. The current treatment assumes that neutrinos are massless. [#365]
    • Add a WMAP9 object using the 9-year WMAP parameters from Hinshaw et al. Once this paper is accepted, this should be made the default, but for now WMAP7 remains the default. [#629]

  • astropy.table I/O infrastructure for custom readers/writers implemented. [#305]

    • Added support for reading/writing HDF5 files [#461]
    • Added support for masked tables with missing or invalid data [#451]

  • New astropy.time sub-package. [#332]

  • New astropy.units sub-package that includes a class for units (astropy.units.Unit) and scalar quantities that have units (astropy.units.Quantity). [#370, #445]

    This has the following effects on other sub-packages:

    • In astropy.wcs, the wcs.cunit list now takes and returns astropy.units.Unit objects. [#379]
    • In astropy.nddata, units are now stored as astropy.units.Unit objects. [#382]
    • In astropy.table, units on columns are now stored as astropy.units.Unit objects. [#380]
    • In astropy.constants, constants are now stored as astropy.units.Quantity objects. [#529]

  • astropy.io.ascii

    • Improved integration with the astropy.table Table class so that table and column metadata (e.g. keywords, units, description, formatting) are directly available in the output table object. The CDS, DAOphot, and IPAC format readers now provide this type of integrated metadata.
    • Changed to using astropy.table masked tables instead of NumPy masked arrays for tables with missing values.
    • Added SExtractor table reader to astropy.io.ascii [#420]
    • Removed the Memory reader class which was used to convert data input passed to the write function into an internal table. Instead write instantiates an astropy Table object using the data input to write.
    • Removed the NumpyOutputter as the output of reading a table is now always a Table object.
    • Removed the option of supplying a function as a column output formatter.
    • Added a new strip_whitespace keyword argument to the write function. This controls whether whitespace is stripped from the left and right sides of table elements before writing. Default is True.
    • Fixed a bug in reading IPAC tables with null values.

  • Generalized I/O infrastructure so that astropy.nddata can also have custom readers/writers [#659]

  • astropy.wcs

    • From updating the the underlying wcslib 4.16:
      • When astropy.wcs.WCS constructs a default coordinate representation it will give it the special name "DEFAULTS", and will not report "Found one coordinate representation".

Other Changes and Additions

  • A configuration file with all options set to their defaults is now generated when astropy is installed. This file will be pulled in as the users' astropy configuration file the first time they import astropy. [#498]
  • Astropy doc themes moved into astropy.sphinx to allow affiliated packages to access them.
  • Added expanded documentation for the astropy.cosmology sub-package. [#272]
  • Added option to disable building of "legacy" packages (pyfits, vo, etc.).
  • The value of the astronomical unit (au) has been updated to that adopted by IAU 2012 Resolution B2, and the values of the pc and kpc constants have been updated to reflect this. [#368]
  • Added links to the documentation pages to directly edit the documentation on GitHub. [#347]
  • Several updates merged from pywcs into astropy.wcs [#384]:
    • Improved the reading of distortion images.
    • Added a new option to choose whether or not to write SIP coefficients.
    • Uses the relax option by default so that non-standard keywords are allowed. [#585]
  • Added HTML representation of tables in IPython notebook [#409]
  • Rewrote CFITSIO-based backend for handling tile compression of FITS files. It now uses a standard CFITSIO instead of heavily modified pieces of CFITSIO as before. Astropy ships with its own copy of CFITSIO v3.30, but system packagers may choose instead to strip this out in favor of a system-installed version of CFITSIO. This corresponds to PyFITS ticket 169. [#318]
  • Moved astropy.config.data to astropy.utils.data and re-factored the I/O routines to separate out the generic I/O code that can be used to open any file or resource from the code used to access Astropy-related data. The 'core' I/O routine is now get_readable_fileobj, which can be used to access any local as well as remote data, supports caching, and can decompress gzip and bzip2 files on-the-fly. [#425]
  • Added a classmethod to astropy.coordinates.coordsystems.SphericalCoordinatesBase that performs a name resolve query using Sesame to retrieve coordinates for the requested object. This works for any subclass of SphericalCoordinatesBase, but requires an internet connection. [#556]
  • astropy.nddata.convolution removed requirement of PyFFTW3; uses Numpy's FFT by default instead with the added ability to specify an FFT implementation to use. [#660]

Bug Fixes

  • astropy.io.ascii
    • Fixed crash when pprinting a row with INDEF values. [#511]
    • Fixed failure when reading DAOphot files with empty keyword values [#666].
  • astropy.io.fits
    • Improved handling of scaled images and pseudo-unsigned integer images in compressed image HDUs. They now work more transparently like normal image HDUs with support for the do_not_scale_image_data and uint options, as well as scale_back and save_backup. The .scale() method works better too. Corresponds to PyFITS ticket 88.
    • Permits non-string values for the EXTNAME keyword when reading in a file, rather than throwing an exception due to the malformatting. Added verification for the format of the EXTNAME keyword when writing. Corresponds to PyFITS ticket 96.
    • Added support for EXTNAME and EXTVER in PRIMARY HDUs. That is, if EXTNAME is specified in the header, it will also be reflected in the .name attribute and in fits.info(). These keywords used to be verboten in PRIMARY HDUs, but the latest version of the FITS standard allows them. Corresponds to PyFITS ticket 151.
    • HCOMPRESS can again be used to compress data cubes (and higher-dimensional arrays) so long as the tile size is effectively 2-dimensional. In fact, compatible tile sizes will automatically be used even if they're not explicitly specified. Corresponds to PyFITS ticket 171.
    • Fixed a bug that could cause a deadlock in the filesystem on OSX when reading the data from certain types of FITS files. This only occurred when used in conjunction with Numpy 1.7. [#369]
    • Added support for the optional endcard parameter in the Header.fromtextfile() and Header.totextfile() methods. Although endcard=False was a reasonable default assumption, there are still text dumps of FITS headers that include the END card, so this should have been more flexible. Corresponds to PyFITS ticket 176.
    • Fixed a crash when running fitsdiff on two empty (that is, zero row) tables. Corresponds to PyFITS ticket 178.
    • Fixed an issue where opening a FITS file containing a random group HDU in update mode could result in an unnecessary rewriting of the file even if no changes were made. This corresponds to PyFITS ticket 179.
    • Fixed a crash when generating diff reports from diffs using the ignore_comments options. Corresponds to PyFITS ticket 181.
    • Fixed some bugs with WCS Paper IV record-valued keyword cards:
      • Cards that looked kind of like RVKCs but were not intended to be were over-permissively treated as such--commentary keywords like COMMENT and HISTORY were particularly affected. Corresponds to PyFITS ticket 183.
      • Looking up a card in a header by its standard FITS keyword only should always return the raw value of that card. That way cards containing values that happen to valid RVKCs but were not intended to be will still be treated like normal cards. Corresponds to PyFITS ticket 184.
      • Looking up a RVKC in a header with only part of the field-specifier (for example "DP1.AXIS" instead of "DP1.AXIS.1") was implicitly treated as a wildcard lookup. Corresponds to PyFITS ticket 184.
    • Fixed a crash when diffing two FITS files where at least one contains a compressed image HDU which was not recognized as an image instead of a table. Corresponds to PyFITS ticket 187.
    • Fixed a bug where opening a file containing compressed image HDUs in 'update' mode and then immediately closing it without making any changes caused the file to be rewritten unnecessarily.
    • Fixed two memory leaks that could occur when writing compressed image data, or in some cases when opening files containing compressed image HDUs in 'update' mode.
    • Fixed a bug where ImageHDU.scale(option='old') wasn't working at all--it was not restoring the image to its original BSCALE and BZERO values.
    • Fixed a bug when writing out files containing zero-width table columns, where the TFIELDS keyword would be updated incorrectly, leaving the table largely unreadable.
    • Fixed a minor string formatting issue.
    • Fixed bugs in the backwards compatibility layer for the CardList.index and CardList.count methods. Corresponds to PyFITS ticket 190.
    • Improved __repr__ and text file representation of cards with long values that are split into CONTINUE cards. Corresponds to PyFITS ticket 193.
    • Fixed a crash when trying to assign a long (> 72 character) value to blank ('') keywords. This also changed how blank keywords are represented--there are still exactly 8 spaces before any commentary content can begin; this may affect the exact display of header cards that assumed there could be fewer spaces in a blank keyword card before the content begins. However, the current approach is more in line with the requirements of the FITS standard. Corresponds to PyFITS ticket 194.
  • astropy.io.votable
    • The Table class now maintains a single array object which is a Numpy masked array. For variable-length columns, the object that is stored there is also a Numpy masked array.
    • Changed the pedantic configuration option to be False by default due to the vast proliferation of non-compliant VO Tables. [#296]
    • Renamed astropy.io.vo to astropy.io.votable.
  • astropy.table
    • Added a workaround for an upstream bug in Numpy 1.6.2 that could cause a maximum recursion depth RuntimeError when printing table rows. [#341]
  • astropy.wcs
    • Updated to wcslib 4.15 [#418]
    • Fixed a problem with handling FITS headers on locales that do not use dot as a decimal separator. This required an upstream fix to wcslib which is included in wcslib 4.14. [#313]
  • Fixed some tests that could fail due to missing/incorrect logging configuration--ensures that tests don't have any impact on the default log location or contents. [#291]
  • Various minor documentation fixes [#293 and others]
  • Fixed a bug where running the tests with the py.test command still tried to replace the system-installed pytest with the one bundled with Astropy. [#454]
  • Improved multiprocessing compatibility for file downloads. [#615]
  • Fixed handling of Cython modules when building from a source checkout of a tagged release version. [#594]
  • Added a workaround for a bug in Sphinx that could occur when using the :tocdepth: directive. [#595]
  • Minor VOTable fixes [#596]
  • Fixed how setup.py uses distribute_setup.py to prevent possible VersionConflict errors when an older version of distribute is already installed on the user's system. [#616][#640]
  • Changed use of log.warn in the logging module to log.warning since the former is deprecated. [#624]

0.1 (2012-06-19)

  • Initial release.