Properly Using PyMeeus — PyMeeus 0.5.12 documentation

# Properly Using PyMeeus

It is very common to try to run PyMeeus like this:

    import pymeeus

    mydate = pymeeus.Epoch(1992, 10, 13.0)

But if you do that, you’ll get an error like this:

    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "/home/user/test/test.py", line 3, in <module>
        epoch = pymeeus.Epoch(1992, 10, 13.0)
    AttributeError: module 'pymeeus' has no attribute 'Epoch'

This issue points to a misunderstanding that is very common in the Python world. The keyword `import` is used to import MODULES… but PyMeeus is NOT a module: It is a LIBRARY composed of MULTIPLE modules (`Angle`, `Epoch`, `Coordinates`, etc). As of today, the library Pymeeus has 19 different modules (if you look into the directory where `pip` stores the library, you’ll find one “.py” file per module).

Therefore if you want to use, for example, the module `Angle` you should use:

    import pymeeus.Angle

I.e., your module is `pymeeus.Angle`, and not just `Angle`.

But there is more! When you use `import` to fetch a module, you must then use the dot notation to access the components of the module (classes, functions, etc). For instance:

    import pymeeus.Angle

    i = pymeeus.Angle.Angle(11.94524)

In this case, you are telling the Python interpreter that you want to use the class `Angle` (with parameter ‘11.94524’) from the module `Angle` belonging to the library `pymeeus`.

There is, however, a more practical (and common) way to handle modules using the statement `from <MODULE> import <COMPONENT>`. For instance:

    from pymeeus.Angle import Angle
    from pymeeus.Epoch import Epoch, JDE2000
    from math import sin, cos, tan, acos, atan2, sqrt, radians, log10

This way is preferred because, among other reasons, only the required components are loaded into memory instead of the whole module. Also, now the component is directly added to your execution environment, which means that you no longer need to use the dot notation.

Therefore, the script at the beginning would become:

    from pymeeus.Epoch import Epoch

    mydate = Epoch(1992, 10, 13.0)