astronomy-commons/hats-import

Raise a warning if ra/dec column is not float64

Opened this issue · 0 comments

Feature request

For most types of spatial analysis, users would need double-precision floating-point numbers for coordinates, even if the input catalog has only single-precision. It would be helpful to raise a warning to recommend that users pre-process the data (or write their own file reader) to cast their data to float64.

We could also provide a (non-default?) option to make this conversion. I'm not sure if defaulting this option would be a good idea, as it would change the data and could produce inconsistent dtypes, for example when RA/Dec errors are presented in the catalog.

Before submitting
Please check the following:

  • I have described the purpose of the suggested change, specifying what I need the enhancement to accomplish, i.e. what problem it solves.
  • I have included any relevant links, screenshots, environment information, and data relevant to implementing the requested feature, as well as pseudocode for how I want to access the new functionality.
  • If I have ideas for how the new feature could be implemented, I have provided explanations and/or pseudocode and/or task lists for the steps.