1 2 PyEphem 3 Installation Notes 4 5 6PyEphem provides an "ephem" Python module that can perform many 7astronomical computations. You can find the most recent version at 8 9 http://rhodesmill.org/pyephem/ 10 11The computation routines behind PyEphem are from the "XEphem" program 12by Elwood Charles Downey (ecdowney@ClearSkyInstitute.com), available 13from http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/. See the COPYING file 14in this directory for licensing information. 15 16INSTALLING 17 18If you have installed the standard Python package tool "pip", then you 19can install PyEphem simply by typing: 20 21 pip install pyephem 22 23Alternately, if you are on a Windows machine, look at the PyEphem web 24site and you should find prominent links to an auto-install tool for 25Windows. 26 27If instead you want to build and install the module yourself, you only 28need Python, your C compiler, and the standard Python distutils. You 29can run the setup.py script in this directory to build or install the 30package. Typically, entering 31 32 python setup.py install 33 34(which you will probably need to do as root, unless you have Python 35installed in your home directory) will both build and install the 36module. 37 38You can use PyEphem in your Python programs by calling: 39 40 import ephem 41 42or perhaps something more like: 43 44 from ephem import Mars, Jupiter, Date 45 46if you know what parts of "ephem" you want to use and you are tired of 47putting "ephem." in front of all the names. 48 49TESTING 50 51Using the new "unittest" module in Python 2.7, you can run the PyEphem 52test suite this way: 53 54 $ python -m unittest discover 55 56On older versions of Python you can separately install the backported 57"unittest2" module and use its "unit2" command line to run the tests: 58 59 $ unit2 discover ephem 60 61DOCUMENTATION 62 63See the "doc" directory inside of the module for documentation, or 64visit the web site at http://rhodesmill.org/pyephem and try starting 65with the "Quick Reference" to learn how PyEphem works. 66 67AUTHOR 68 69Brandon Craig Rhodes 70brandon@rhodesmill.org 71http://rhodesmill.org/brandon 72