HERMPY - A tool-belt for space science at Mercury

Tools for aiding in the handling of data and the creation of publication ready plots from spacecraft around Mercury.

Installation

The hermpy package can be installed manually in the following way:

git clone https://github.com/daraghhollman/hermpy
cd hermpy/
pip install .

Further Setup

Further setup is required. Paths in hermpy/utils/utils.py, class: User must be updated to locations of your choosing. MESSENGER MAG data can be automatically downloaded using hermpy.utils.User.Download_MESSENGER_MAG(), however, it is currently quicker to download zip files using the PDS, doi. The directories however should match the following format:

.
├── 2011
│   ├── 03_MAR
│   │   ├── MAGMSOSCIAVG11082_01_V08.TAB
│   │   ├── MAGMSOSCIAVG11083_01_V08.TAB
│   │   ... etc.
│   ├── 04_APR
│   ├── 05_MAY
│   ├── 06_JUN
│   ├── 07_JUL
│   ├── 08_AUG
│   ├── 09_SEP
│   ├── 10_OCT
│   ├── 11_NOV
│   └── 12_DEC
├── 2012
│   ├── 01_JAN
│   ├── 02_FEB
│   ├── 03_MAR
│   ├── 04_APR
│   ├── 05_MAY
...

Philpott Crossing List

The Philott et al. (2020) crossing list can be downloaded from supplementary information here. The path must be updated in hermpy/utils/utils.py

SPICE

hermpy uses SPICE to determine MESSENGER ephemerides. You require a SPICE MetaKernel appropriate for the MESSENGER mission. The MetaKernel should refer to the appropriate MESSENGER ephemeris (spk) and frame (fk) kernels for the period of interest, the current leap seconds kernel (lsk), an appropriate planetary and/or satellite ephemeris kernel (spk), and an appropriate planetary constants kernel (pck).

More information about the SPICE toolkit can be found at: (https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/toolkit.html)

In particular, useful information for constructing a MetaKernel can be found at: https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/toolkit_docs/C/req/kernel.html

If you don’t have your own metakernel, you can create one for MESSENGER using this tool:

• AutoMeta

Usage

Examples can be found in the examples/ directory. Due to some recent breaking changes, not all of these examples will work out of the box. If you have issues running an example script, please report it as a Github issue!

References

Winslow, R. M., B. J. Anderson, C. L. Johnson, J. A. Slavin, H. Korth, M. E. Purucker, D. N. Baker, and S. C. Solomon (2013), Mercury’s magnetopause and bow shock from MESSENGER Magnetometer observations, J. Geophys. Res. Space Physics, 118, 2213–2227, doi:10.1002/jgra.50237

Philpott, L. C., Johnson, C. L., Anderson, B. J., & Winslow, R. M. (2020). The shape of Mercury's magnetopause: The picture from MESSENGER magnetometer observations and future prospects for BepiColombo. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 125, e2019JA027544. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JA027544

Annex et al., (2020). SpiceyPy: a Pythonic Wrapper for the SPICE Toolkit. Journal of Open Source Software, 5(46), 2050, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.02050

Acton, C.H.; "Ancillary Data Services of NASA's Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility;" Planetary and Space Science, Vol. 44, No. 1, pp. 65-70, 1996.