dustmaps

The dustmaps package provides a uniform interface for dealing with a number of 2D and 3D maps of interstellar dust reddening/extinction.

Supported Dust Maps

The currently supported dust maps are:

1. Burstein & Heiles (1982; BH'82)
2. Chen et al. (2014)
3. Green, Schlafly, Finkbeiner et al. (2015,2018,2019; Bayestar)
4. Marshall et al. (2006)
5. Planck Collaboration (2013)
6. Planck Collaboration (2016; GNILC)
7. Sale et al. (2014; IPHAS)
8. Schlegel, Finkbeiner & Davis (1998; SFD'98)
9. Lenz, Hensley & Doré (2017)
10. Peek & Graves (2010)
11. Leike & Enßlin (2019)
12. Leike, Glatzle & Enßlin (2020)
13. Edenhofer et al. (2023)
14. Chiang (2023; CSFD)
15. Zucker, Saydjari, & Speagle et al. (2025; DECaPS)

To request addition of another dust map in this package, file an issue on GitHub, or submit a pull request.

Installation

Download the repository from GitHub and then run:

python setup.py install --large-data-dir=/path/where/you/want/large/data/files/stored

Alternatively, you can use the Python package manager pip:

pip install dustmaps

Getting the Data

To fetch the data for the SFD dust map, run:

python setup.py fetch --map-name=sfd

You can download the other dust maps by changing "sfd" to "csfd", "planck", "planckGNILC", "bayestar", "iphas", "marshall", "chen2014", "lenz2017", "pg2010", "leikeensslin2019", "leike2020", "edenhofer2023", "bh", or "decaps".

Alternatively, if you have used pip to install dustmaps, then you can configure the data directory and download the data by opening up a python interpreter and running:

>>> from dustmaps.config import config
>>> config['data_dir'] = '/path/where/you/want/large/data/files/stored'
>>>
>>> import dustmaps.sfd
>>> dustmaps.sfd.fetch()
>>>
>>> import dustmaps.csfd
>>> dustmaps.csfd.fetch()
>>>
>>> import dustmaps.planck
>>> dustmaps.planck.fetch()
>>>
>>> import dustmaps.planck
>>> dustmaps.planck.fetch(which='GNILC')
>>>
>>> import dustmaps.bayestar
>>> dustmaps.bayestar.fetch()
>>>
>>> import dustmaps.iphas
>>> dustmaps.iphas.fetch()
>>>
>>> import dustmaps.marshall
>>> dustmaps.marshall.fetch()
>>>
>>> import dustmaps.chen2014
>>> dustmaps.chen2014.fetch()
>>>
>>> import dustmaps.lenz2017
>>> dustmaps.lenz2017.fetch()
>>>
>>> import dustmaps.pg2010
>>> dustmaps.pg2010.fetch()
>>>
>>> import dustmaps.leike_ensslin_2019
>>> dustmaps.leike_ensslin_2019.fetch()
>>>
>>> import dustmaps.leike2020
>>> dustmaps.leike2020.fetch()
>>>
>>> import dustmaps.edenhofer2023
>>> dustmaps.edenhofer2023.fetch()
>>>
>>> import dustmaps.decaps
>>> dustmaps.decaps.fetch()

Querying the Maps

Maps are queried using astropy.coordinates.SkyCoord objects. This means that any coordinate system supported by astropy can be used as input. For example, we can query SFD'98 as follows:

>>> from dustmaps.sfd import SFDQuery
>>> from astropy.coordinates import SkyCoord
>>>
>>> sfd = SFDQuery()
>>>
>>> c = SkyCoord(
        '05h00m00.00000s',
        '+30d00m00.0000s',
        frame='icrs')
>>> print sfd(c)
0.483961

Above, we have used the ICRS coordinate system (the inputs are RA and Dec). We can use other coordinate systems, such as Galactic coordinates, and we can provide coordinate arrays. The following example uses both features:

>>> c = SkyCoord(
        [75.00000000, 130.00000000],
        [-89.00000000, 10.00000000],
        frame='galactic',
        unit='deg')
>>> print sfd(c)
[ 0.0146584   0.97695869]

Documentation

Read the full documentation at http://dustmaps.readthedocs.io/en/latest/.

Citation

If you make use of this software in a publication, please cite Green (2018) in The Journal of Open Source Software:

@ARTICLE{2018JOSS....3..695M,
       author = {{Green}, {Gregory M.}},
        title = "{dustmaps: A Python interface for maps of interstellar dust}",
      journal = {The Journal of Open Source Software},
         year = "2018",
        month = "Jun",
       volume = {3},
       number = {26},
        pages = {695},
          doi = {10.21105/joss.00695},
       adsurl = {https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018JOSS....3..695M},
      adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

Development

Development of dustmaps takes place on GitHub, at https://github.com/gregreen/dustmaps. Any bugs, feature requests, pull requests, or other issues can be filed there. Contributions to the software are welcome.