
                               PyEphem
                           Version: 3.7.2.1
                            2007 October 1


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://iraf.noao.edu/~ecdowney/xephem.html.

See the COPYING file in this directory for copyright information.

INSTALLING

Building and installing this module requires 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, which you can use in your Python programs with either an

	import ephem

or perhaps a

	from ephem import *

to avoid putting "ephem." in front of all the names.  There are
documentation files in the doc/ directory, some small scripts in the
examples/ directory, and test suites for verifying your installation
in the test/ directory.

DOCUMENTATION

See the doc/pyephem-manual.html file in this archive, or look online
at http://rhodesmill.org/pyephem for information on programming with
PyEphem.

CONTRIBUTING

If you write useful scripts with PyEphem, please consider submitting
them to be considered for the 'examples/' directory.  In particular,
there will probably be interest in algorithms that search for various
celestial circumstances, like conjunctions; not needing such routines
myself, however, I have not endeavored to produce any.

AUTHOR

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