
                               PyEphem
                          Installation Notes


PyEphem provides an "ephem" Python module that can perform many
astronomical computations.  You can find the most recent version at

   http://rhodesmill.org/pyephem/

The computation routines behind PyEphem are from the "XEphem" program
by Elwood Charles Downey (ecdowney@ClearSkyInstitute.com), available
from http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/.  See the COPYING file
in this directory for licensing information.

INSTALLING

If you have installed the standard Python package tool "pip", then you
can install PyEphem simply by typing:

        pip install pyephem

Alternately, if you are on a Windows machine, look at the PyEphem web
site and you should find prominent links to an auto-install tool for
Windows.

If instead you want to build and install the module yourself, you only
need Python, your C compiler, and the standard Python distutils.  You
can run the setup.py script in this directory to build or install the
package.  Typically, entering

	python setup.py install

(which you will probably need to do as root, unless you have Python
installed in your home directory) will both build and install the
module.

You can use PyEphem in your Python programs by calling:

	import ephem

or perhaps something more like:

	from ephem import Mars, Jupiter, Date

if you know what parts of "ephem" you want to use and you are tired of
putting "ephem." in front of all the names.

TESTING

Using the new "unittest" module in Python 2.7, you can run the PyEphem
test suite this way:

    $ python -m unittest discover

On older versions of Python you can separately install the backported
"unittest2" module and use its "unit2" command line to run the tests:

    $ unit2 discover ephem

DOCUMENTATION

See the "doc" directory inside of the module for documentation, or
visit the web site at http://rhodesmill.org/pyephem and try starting
with the "Quick Reference" to learn how PyEphem works.

AUTHOR

Brandon Craig Rhodes
brandon@rhodesmill.org
http://rhodesmill.org/brandon
