skyfield 0.6.1

Elegant astronomy for Python

Skyfield is a pure-Python astronomy package that is compatible with both Python 2 and 3 and makes it easy to generate high precision research-grade positions for planets and Earth satellites.

from skyfield.api import load, now

planets = load('de421.bsp')
earth, mars = planets['earth'], planets['mars']

jd = now()
position = earth.at(jd).observe(mars)
ra, dec, distance = position.radec()

print(ra)
print(dec)
print(distance)

10h 47m 56.24s
+09deg 03' 23.1"
2.33251 au

Its only binary dependency is NumPy. Skyfield can usually be installed with:

pip install skyfield

Here are the essential project links:

• Home page and documentation.

• Contributing to Skyfield.

• Skyfield package on the Python Package Index.

• Issue tracker on GitHub.