match_coordinates_sky

astropy.coordinates.match_coordinates_sky(matchcoord, catalogcoord, nthneighbor=1, storekdtree='kdtree_sky')

Finds the nearest on-sky matches of a coordinate or coordinates in a set of catalog coordinates.

This finds the on-sky closest neighbor, which is only different from the 3-dimensional match if distance is set in either matchcoord or catalogcoord.

Parameters:

matchcoordBaseCoordinateFrame or SkyCoord

The coordinate(s) to match to the catalog.

catalogcoordBaseCoordinateFrame or SkyCoord

The base catalog in which to search for matches. Typically this will be a coordinate object that is an array (i.e., catalogcoord.isscalar == False)

nthneighborpython:int, optional

Which closest neighbor to search for. Typically 1 is desired here, as that is correct for matching one set of coordinates to another. The next likely use case is 2, for matching a coordinate catalog against itself (1 is inappropriate because each point will find itself as the closest match).

storekdtreebool or python:str, optional

If a string, will store the KD-Tree used for the computation in the catalogcoord in catalogcoord.cache with the provided name. This dramatically speeds up subsequent calls with the same catalog. If False, the KD-Tree is discarded after use.

Returns:

CoordinateMatchResult

A NamedTuple with attributes representing for each source in matchcoord the indices and angular and physical separations of the match in catalogcoord. If either matchcoord or catalogcoord lack distances, the physical separation is the 3D distance on the unit sphere, rather than a true distance.

Notes

This function requires SciPy to be installed or it will fail.