python-magnetosphere

Python package providing IGRF magnetic field calculations, cosmic ray cutoff rigidity analysis, and coordinate transformations for space physics applications.

The magnetosphere package is a collection of useful libraries for Earth and Space scientists, providing three main modules. The igrf module offers methods based on the International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF) version 11, including functions to calculate the geomagnetic dipole moment, L-shell and geomagnetic field intensity, Earth's magnetic field vector components, and the smallest magnetic field strength on a field line through field-line tracing. The cxform module provides coordinate transformation capabilities, allowing users to transform Cartesian coordinates between various coordinate systems commonly used in space physics, including geocentric (GEI, J2000, GEO, MAG), magnetospheric (GSE, GSM, SM), and heliospheric (HEE, HAE, HEEQ, GSEQ, RTN) coordinate systems. The rigidity module calculates cosmic ray cutoff rigidity at various altitudes, determining the minimum particle momentum required for cosmic rays to penetrate Earth's magnetosphere at a given location. The IGRF wrapper and rigidity module were developed by David Parunakian at the Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, while the coordinate transformation functionality is based on CXFORM, an IDL/C library originally written by Ed Santiago at LANL and maintained by Ryan Boller at NASA/GSFC.