read_bshc()

Read real spherical harmonic coefficients from a binary bshc file.

Usage

coeffs, lmaxout = read_bshc(filename, [lmax])

Returns

coeffs : ndarray, size(2, lmaxout+1, lmaxout+1)

The spherical harmonic coefficients.

lmaxout : int

The maximum spherical harmonic degree read from the file.

Parameters

filename : str or pathlib.Path

File name or URL that contains the spherical harmonic coefficients. filename will be treated as a URL if it starts with ‘http://’, ‘https://’, or ‘ftp://’. If filename ends with ‘.gz’ or ‘.zip’, the file will be uncompressed before parsing.

lmax : int, optional, default = None

The maximum spherical harmonic degree to read from the file. The default is to read the entire file.

Notes

This function reads real spherical harmonic coefficients from binary ‘bshc’-formatted files as used at Curtin University. The file is composed solely of 8-byte floats, starting with the minimum and maximum degree, and followed by the cosine coefficients and then sine coefficients (with all orders being listed, one degree at a time). For a 100 degree file, the contents are

0 10800 C(0,0), C(1,0), C(1,1), C(2,0), C(2,1), … C(100,99), C(100,100) S(0,0), S(1,0), S(1,1), S(2,0), S(2,1), … S(100,99), S(100,100).

If filename starts with ‘http://’, ‘https://’, or ‘ftp://’, the file will be treated as a URL. In this case, the file will be downloaded in its entirety before it is parsed.

If the filename ends with ‘.gz’ or ‘.zip’, the file will be automatically uncompressed before parsing. For zip files, archives with only a single file are supported.