spacepy.plot

plot: SpacePy plotting routines

This package aims to make getting publication ready plots easier. It provides classes and functions for different types of plot (e.g. Spectrogram, levelPlot), for helping make plots more cleanly (e.g. set_target, dual_half_circle), and for making plots convey information more cleanly, with less effort (e.g. applySmartTimeTicks, style).

This plot module now provides style sheets. For most standard plotting we recommend the default style sheet (aka spacepy). To apply the default plot style, use the following:

import spacepy.plot as splot
splot.style()

Changed in version 0.5.0: Plot styles are no longer applied automatically.

Different plot types may not work well with this style, so we have provided alternatives. For polar plots, spectrograms, or anything with larger blocks of color, it may be better to use one of the alternatives:

import spacepy.plot as splot
splot.style('altgrid') # inverts background from default so it's white
splot.style('polar') # designed for filled polar plots
splot.revert_style() # put the style back to matplotlib defaults

Authors: Brian Larsen and Steve Morley Institution: Los Alamos National Laboratory Contact: balarsen@lanl.gov

Copyright 2011-2016 Los Alamos National Security, LLC.

Most of the functionality in the plot module is made available directly through the plot namespace. However, the plot module does contain several submodules listed below

Submodules

apionly	Formerly used to import spacepy.plot without changing styles.
carrington	Module for plotting data by Carrington or Bartels rotation
spectrogram	Create and plot generic 'spectrograms' for space science.
utils	Utility routines for plotting and related activities

Functions

available([returnvals])	List the available plot styles provided by spacepy.plot
dual_half_circle([center, radius, ...])	Plot two half circles to a plot with the specified face colors and rotation.
levelPlot(data[, var, time, levels, target, ...])	Draw a step-plot with up to 5 levels following a color cycle (e.g. Kp index "stoplight").
plot(*args, **kwargs)	Convenience wrapper for matplotlib's plot function
revert_style()	Revert plot style settings to those in use prior to importing spacepy.plot
style([look, cmap])	Apply SpacePy's matplotlib style settings from a known style sheet.

spacepy.plot.available(returnvals=False)

List the available plot styles provided by spacepy.plot

Note that some of the available styles have multiple aliases. To apply an available style, use spacepy.plot.style.

spacepy.plot.dual_half_circle(center=(0, 0), radius=1.0, sun_direction='right', ax=None, colors=('w', 'k'), **kwargs)

Plot two half circles to a plot with the specified face colors and rotation. This is normal to use to denote the sun direction in magnetospheric science plots.

Returns:

outtuple

Tuple of the two wedge objects

Other Parameters:

centerarray-like, 2 elements

Center in data coordinates of the circles, default (0,0)

radiusfloat

Radius of the circles, defualt 1.0

sun_directionstring or float

The rotation direction of the first (white) circle. Options are [‘down’, ‘down right’, ‘right’, ‘up left’, ‘up right’, ‘up’, ‘down left’, ‘left’] or an angle in degrees counter-clockwise from up. Default right.

axmatplotlib.axes

Axis to plot the circles on.

colorsarray-like, 2 elements

The two colors for the circle fill. The First number is the light and second is the dark.

**kwargsother keywords

Other keywords to pass to matplotlib.patches.Wedge

Examples

>>> import spacepy.plot
>>> spacepy.plot.dual_half_circle()

spacepy.plot.levelPlot(data, var=None, time=None, levels=(3, 5), target=None, colors=None, **kwargs)

Draw a step-plot with up to 5 levels following a color cycle (e.g. Kp index “stoplight”)

Parameters:

dataarray-like, or dict-like

Data for plotting. If dict-like, the key providing an array-like to plot must be given to var keyword argument.

Returns:

binnedtuple

Tuple of the binned data and bins

Other Parameters:

varstring

Name of key in dict-like input that contains data

timearray-like or string

Name of key in dict-like that contains time, or arraylike of datetimes

levelsarray-like, up to 5 levels

Breaks between levels in data that should be shown as distinct colors

targetfigure or axes

Target axes or figure window

colorsarray-like

Colors to use for the color sequence (if insufficient colors, will use as a cycle)

**kwargsother keywords

Other keywords to pass to spacepy.toolbox.binHisto

Examples

>>> import spacepy.plot as splot
>>> import spacepy.time as spt
>>> import spacepy.omni as om
>>> tt = spt.tickrange('2012/09/28','2012/10/2', 3/24.)
>>> omni = om.get_omni(tt)
>>> splot.levelPlot(omni, var='Kp', time='UTC', colors=['seagreen', 'orange', 'crimson'])

spacepy.plot.plot(*args, **kwargs)

Convenience wrapper for matplotlib’s plot function

As with matplotlib’s plot function, args is a variable length argument, allowing for multiple x, y pairs, each with optional format string. For full details, see matplotlib.pyplot.plot

Other Parameters:

smartTimeTicksboolean

If True then use applySmartTimeTicks to set x-axis labeling

figsizearray-like, 2 elements

Set figure size directly on call to plot, (width, height)

**kwargsother keywords

Other keywords to pass to matplotlib.pyplot.plot

spacepy.plot.revert_style()

Revert plot style settings to those in use prior to importing spacepy.plot

spacepy.plot.style(look=None, cmap='plasma')

Apply SpacePy’s matplotlib style settings from a known style sheet.

Parameters:

lookstr, optional

Name of style. For a list of available style names, see spacepy.plot.available. If not specified, will use default "spacepy" style.