datetime_to_et

giant.utilities.spice_interface:

giant.utilities.spice_interface.datetime_to_et(date)[source]

This function converts a python datetime object to ephemeris time correcting for leap seconds

If you have spiceypy installed in your python distribution then this is essentially just a wrapper around the str2et function from spice. If you don’t have spiceypy installed then this emulates str2et in python code with a hardcoded version of the tls kernel in this module. If the tls kernel is changed and you are not using spiceypy then this module needs to be updated!

Parameters

date (Union[datetime.datetime, numpy.datetime64, pandas.core.indexes.datetimes.DatetimeIndex]) – The datetime instance to be converted

Returns

The ephemeris time corresponding to observation_date for use in the spice system

Return type

float