find_star_pairs

giant.catalogues.giant_catalogue:

giant.catalogues.giant_catalogue.find_star_pairs(star_records, max_separation)[source]

This identifies possible star pairs based on separation.

Stars are paired if their max separation is less that the input max_separation in degrees. This is done by creating unit vectors for all of the stars and then doing a pair query using a KDTree. The pairs are sorted based on magnitude so that the first star in each pair is brighter.

The result of this function will be a dataframe where the first column “a” is the primary star and the second column “b” is a set of stars that should be combined with “a”.

Generally this is not used directly by the user. Instead see build_catalogue() or script build_catalogue.

Parameters:

  • star_records (DataFrame) – The dataframe containing the stars that are to be paired

  • max_separation (float) – The maximum separation in degrees between stars for them to be paired

Returns:

A dataframe specifying stars to pair together.

Return type:

DataFrame