pyRFU

The Python package pyrfu is a software based on the IRFU-MATLAB library to work with space data, particularly the Magnetospheric MultiScale (MMS) mission.

It is distributed under the open-source MIT license.

Quickstart

Installing pyrfu with pip (more details here):

$ python -m pip install pyrfu
# or
$ python -m pip install --user pyrfu

Import pyrfu.mms package with routines specific to work with the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission (MMS)

from pyrfu import mms

Setup path to MMS data

mms.db_init(default="local", local="/Volumes/mms")

Load magnetic field and ion bulk velocity data

tint = ["2019-09-14T07:54:00.000", "2019-09-14T08:11:00.000"]
b_gsm = mms.get_data("b_gsm_fgm_srvy_l2", tint, 1)
v_gse_i = mms.get_data("vi_gse_fpi_fast_l2", tint, 1)

Import pyrfu.pyrf package with generic routines

from pyrfu import pyrf

Transform ion bulk velocity to geocentric solar magnetospheric (GSM) coordinates

v_gsm_i = pyrf.cotrans(v_gse_i, "gse>gsm")

Import pyrfu.plot package with plotting routines

from pyrfu.plot import plot_line

Plot time series of magnetic field and ion bulk velocity

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

f, axs = plt.subplots(2, sharex="all")
plot_line(axs[0], b_gsm)
axs[0].set_ylabel("$B~[\\mathrm{nT}]$")
axs[0].legend(["$B_{x}$", "$B_{y}$", "$B_{z}$"], ncol=4)

plot_line(axs[1], v_gsm_i)
axs[1].set_ylabel("$V_i~[\\mathrm{km}~\\mathrm{s}^{-1}]$")
axs[1].legend(["$V_{ix}$", "$V_{iy}$", "$V_{iz}$"], ncol=4)

Documentation

Full documentation can be found on pyrfu.readthedocs.io

Examples

A list of examples is available here

Credits

This software was developed by Louis RICHARD at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) in Uppsala, based on the IRFU-MATLAB library, and is now maintained by Louis RICHARD at the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford (louis.richard@physics.ox.ac.uk).

Acknowledgement

If pyrfu contributes to work leading to a publication, please cite it and give the version you used (pyrfu.__version__), for example in the acknowledgements or the methods section:

Data analysis was performed using the open-source pyrfu package (Richard et al., 2024), version X.Y.Z.

Reference:

Richard, L., Khotyaintsev, Y. V., Vaivads, A., Graham, D. B., Norgren, C., & Johlander, A. (2024). Python RymdFysik Utilities (PyRFU): An open-source Python package for advanced in-situ space plasma analysis [Software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10678695

BibTeX:

@software{richard2024pyrfu,
  author    = {Richard, Louis and Khotyaintsev, Yuri V. and Vaivads, Andris and
               Graham, Daniel B. and Norgren, Cecilia and Johlander, Andreas},
  title     = {Python RymdFysik Utilities (PyRFU): An Open-Source Python Package
               for Advanced In-Situ Space Plasma Analysis},
  year      = {2024},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.10678695},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10678695}
}

The same metadata is in CITATION.cff (GitHub’s “Cite this repository”). Many routines implement published methods, given in the References section of their documentation: please cite those as well, and acknowledge the data you use following the policy of each mission (for MMS, the instrument teams and the MMS Science Data Center).

Metadata

Release files for pyrfu 2.5.0

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for pyrfu 2.5.0
File	Size	Uploaded
pyrfu-2.5.0.tar.gz	425.1 kB	Oct 7, 2026	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for pyrfu 2.5.0
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
pyrfu-2.5.0-py3-none-any.whl 567.7 kB Oct 7, 2026	Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 992.8 kB

Release files / pyrfu-2.5.0.tar.gz

Download URL	pyrfu-2.5.0.tar.gz
Size	425.1 kB
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Uploaded via	`twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.14.7`

Release files / pyrfu-2.5.0-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL	pyrfu-2.5.0-py3-none-any.whl
Size	567.7 kB
Tags	Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`ee5c925a45bac77bc8c44b63e37f0495db5fdd139c974cdb4097fa5914669d6f`
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Upload date	Oct 7, 2026
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Uploaded via	`twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.14.7`