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Python 3 implementation of the Graduated Cylindrical Shell model (GCS,Thernisien, 2011).Based on the existing IDL implementation inSolarSoft(cmecloud.pro,shellskeleton.pro).

The code ingcs/geometry.py provides the basic implementation of the GCS geometry, while the Qt-based GUI ingcs/gui.py usesSunPy and Matplotlib to plot the model on top of coronagraph images provided byHelioviewer.org.

A more detailed description of the GCS model, this Python implementation and its validation is given inthis excerpt frommy PhD thesis.

This code is still in a quite early stage. It has been compared with the original IDL/SolarSoft version to verify the results, but only for a few case studies.Please be careful when using it and compare to IDL when in doubt.

If you find a bug, run into technical problems during the installation, or have suggestions for improvement, please create aGitHubissue. As I have since left the Heliophysics field and am no longer actively using the tool myself, I can't promise timely responses. But it is still preferrable compared to writing me an email in private, as other users can also help you.

If you have fixed a bug or implemented improvements, please feel free to open aPull Request!

If you use this code in a publication, please cite it usingthe DOI generated by Zenodo. I would also appreciate it if youdrop me an email and tell me what you used it for :)

Python 3.7 or later and Git are required for installation.

# install GCSpip3 install git+https://github.com/johan12345/gcs_python.git# run GCS GUI, providing a date/time and the spacecraft to usegcs_gui "2020-04-15 06:00" STA SOHO

Information on the available command line arguments for the GUI is given when you run the help option:

gcs_gui -h

• command not found: gcs_gui
  This sounds like the directory wherepip installs executables (on Linux this is typically~/.local/bin) is not on yourPATH.pip probably printed a warning about this when you were installing the package.
• RuntimeError: You must have a version of OpenJPEG at least as high as 2.3.0 before you can read JPEG2000 images with glymur.
  Loading Helioviewer images with SunPy requires the OpenJPEG library to be available on yourPATH. You can install it through your system package manager (e.g.,apt install libopenjp2-7-dev), throughconda ormanually, as you prefer.

Simply install GCS (as seen above) and use

importgcs.geometry

to import the code from the GCS package. You can find some examples what you can do with it in the filessample.py andsample_sunpy.py.

First, clone the git repository:

git@github.com:johan12345/gcs_python.git

It is recommended to use avirtual environment so that thePython packages you install as dependencies of GCS don't interfere with your globally installed packages.On some Linux distributions, the additionalpython3-venv package needs to be installed for this to work.

python3 -m venv env. env/bin/activate

Then, install the dependencies:

# install requirementspython3 -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptoolspip3 install -r requirements.txt

and test the GUI using

python -m gcs.gui"2020-04-15 06:00" STA SOHO