How to plot a tissot with cartopy and matplotlib? - matplotlib

Question

For plotting skymaps I just switched from Basemap to cartopy, I like it a lot more
.
(The main reason was segfaulting of Basemap on some computers, which I could not fix).
The only thing I struggle with, is getting a tissot circle (used to show the view cone of our telescope.)
This is some example code plotting random stars (I use a catalogue for the real thing):
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from cartopy import crs
import numpy as np
# create some random stars:
n_stars = 100
azimuth = np.random.uniform(0, 360, n_stars)
altitude = np.random.uniform(75, 90, n_stars)
brightness = np.random.normal(8, 2, n_stars)
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1, projection=crs.NorthPolarStereo())
ax.background_patch.set_facecolor('black')
ax.set_extent([-180, 180, 75, 90], crs.PlateCarree())
plot = ax.scatter(
azimuth,
altitude,
c=brightness,
s=0.5*(-brightness + brightness.max())**2,
transform=crs.PlateCarree(),
cmap='gray_r',
)
plt.show()
How would I add a tissot circle with a certain radius in degrees to that image?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tissot%27s_indicatrix

Answer 1

I keep meaning to go back and add the two functions from GeographicLib which provide the forward and inverse geodesic calculations, with this it is simply a matter of computing a geodetic circle by sampling at appropriate azimuths for a given lat/lon/radius. Alas, I haven't yet done that, but there is a fairly primitive (but effective) wrapper in pyproj for the functionality.
To implement a tissot indicatrix then, the code might look something like:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import cartopy.crs as ccrs
import numpy as np
from pyproj import Geod
import shapely.geometry as sgeom
def circle(geod, lon, lat, radius, n_samples=360):
"""
Return the coordinates of a geodetic circle of a given
radius about a lon/lat point.
Radius is in meters in the geodetic's coordinate system.
"""
lons, lats, back_azim = geod.fwd(np.repeat(lon, n_samples),
np.repeat(lat, n_samples),
np.linspace(360, 0, n_samples),
np.repeat(radius, n_samples),
radians=False,
)
return lons, lats
def main():
ax = plt.axes(projection=ccrs.Robinson())
ax.coastlines()
geod = Geod(ellps='WGS84')
radius_km = 500
n_samples = 80
geoms = []
for lat in np.linspace(-80, 80, 10):
for lon in np.linspace(-180, 180, 7, endpoint=False):
lons, lats = circle(geod, lon, lat, radius_km * 1e3, n_samples)
geoms.append(sgeom.Polygon(zip(lons, lats)))
ax.add_geometries(geoms, ccrs.Geodetic(), facecolor='blue', alpha=0.7)
plt.show()
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()