K2ephem 1.1.0

Check if a Solar System object is (or was) observable by NASA's K2 mission. This command will query JPL/Horizons to find out.

*Checks whether a Solar System body is (or was) observable by `NASA’s K2 mission <http://keplerscience.arc.nasa.gov>`__.*

The JPL/Horizons ephemeris service allows users to predict the position of Solar System bodies in the sky as seen from the Kepler/K2 spacecraft. This can be achieved by entering @-227 as the “Observer Location”. (Setting the location to be the Kepler spacecraft is crucial, because Kepler is more than 0.5 AU away from the Earth!)

This repository provides a command-line tool that uses the JPL/Horizons service to check whether a Solar System body is (or was) in the footprint of one of the past or future K2 Campaign fields.

Installation

You need to have a working version of Python installed. If this requirement is met, you can install K2ephem from the git repository as follows:

$ git clone https://github.com/KeplerGO/K2ephem.git
$ cd K2ephem
$ python setup.py install

The setup.py script will automatically take care of installing two required dependencies (K2fov and pandas).

Usage

After installation, you can call K2ephem from the command line. For example, to verify whether comet Chiron can be observed by K2, simply type:

K2ephem Chiron

Authors

Created by Geert Barentsen (geert.barentsen at nasa.gov) on behalf of the Kepler/K2 Guest Observer Office.