SpicePosition.light_time

giant.utilities.spice_interface:

SpicePosition.light_time(date)

Make the call to spkpos given the stored settings at the input date returning only the light time in TDB seconds.

Specifically the call is

spiceypy.spkpos(self.target, datetime_to_et(date), self.reference_frame, self.corrections, self.observer)[1]

where datetime_to_et() converts a datetime object into ephemeris (TDB) seconds since the J2000 epoch and we take the second return to get the light time and not the position vector

Parameters:

date (datetime) – The date we are querying spice at as a datetime object

Returns:

The one way light time between the observer and the target in TDB seconds.

Return type:

float