Zane Selvans wrote: > Hello all, > > I need to do analysis of vector data (linear features, polylines) on > the surface of a sphere. Many of the lines span a significant portion > of the circumferance of the the body in question (Jupiter's moon > Europa), and I want to be able to do the display of the data and > analysis within Matplotlib. > > Rather than writing my own (probably lame) module for manipulating and > generating linear features stored as lists of (lat,lon) points, I'd > prefer to build on someone else's work. > > After a little searching around, it seems like most open GIS packages > (e.g. OGL, GDAL) seem to work exclusively within a projected planar > space. Am I missing something? Is there anyone else out there that > does this kind of thing? What solutions do people have that work well > with Matplotlib and the Basemap toolkit? > > Ideally, I'd like to have the ability to perform transformations on > the polylines, rotating and translating them on the surface of the > sphere (without having to do the spherical trig myself), and I have to > be able to have features cross the "date line" and wrap-around > intelligently, calculate great-circle distances (and forward/back > azimuths), best-fit great circles, etc. > > Thanks for any recommendations you might have, > Zane >
Zane: Basemap can calculate great-circle distances (with forward/back azimuths). I'm not to clear on the types of transformations you need, but Basemap basically just does the forward and inverse transformations from map projection to geographic (lat/lon) coordinates. My guess is that it won't do the type of rotation and translation that you want to do. -Jeff -- Jeffrey S. Whitaker Phone : (303)497-6313 NOAA/OAR/CDC R/PSD1 FAX : (303)497-6449 325 Broadway Boulder, CO, USA 80305-3328 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Matplotlib-users mailing list Matplotlib-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-users
