Changelog

0.4.0 - 28.05.2025

Changed exposure_time parameter to duration to be more agnostic to the type of observation.
Removed the TargetAlwaysUp warning from astroplan. This is caused when looking for the rise and set times of a target that is always up, but this is not a problem for the scheduler and might be confusing for the user.
Fixed a small bug in the import of plotly. The idea is that it is an optional dependency and should not be imported if not needed. It is only imported when the plot_interactive() method is called.
Migrated build system from setup.py to pyproject.toml
Added example plots of a plan to the README file.
Removed Instrument class. The instrument is now an optional parameter of the Observation class. - This is to allow the cases where a Program might use more than one instrument. And to make it more flexible.
The plot_altaz() of Plan mow has a color_by parameter that allows to color the each observation by the target’s Program or instrument.
The Merit objects can now take a weighting factor. This is to allow the user to set the importance of each merit in the final score. These weights are normalized by merit type. Meaning all merits of the same type are grouped and the weights are normalized to sum to 1.
Information is now shown with proper logging instead of print statements.

New readthedocs documentation with installation instructions, changelog, API reference and examples.
Cleanup of some docstrings and comments.

Versions 0.3.4, 0.3.5, and 0.3.6 were improvements in the documentation and the README file.

Added tests for all classes from scheduler_components.
Cleaner README with updated links.
Removed the __eq__ methods for Program as it wasn’t actually needed and was causing problems.

Added matplotlib to the requirements and removed plotly from the top imports of scheduler_components.py. This way plotly will only be imported when the plot_interactive() method is called.
Added some __repr__ and __eq__ methods to the Program and Target classes.
Fixed a bug in the Instrument class where the __repr__ was referencing an old attribute name.
Get the logo from the GitHub URL instead of the local file of the repo. This way the logo can be displayed in PyPI.

Added a night_duration attribute to the night object. A datetime.timedelta object that represents the duration of the night.

Implemented a Local Search Heuristic that optimizes the overall overhead time of a plan.
The same for optimizing the score after the overheads are minimized.
In the Overheads object, the slew can now take into account cable wrap limits.
Simulation module was updated and works again.
Added a new phase-specific merit which is an improved version of the periodic gaussian merit. In this merit the sigma is actually the standard deviation of the gaussian in phase space.
Added to_df() and to_csv() methods to Plan which create a pandas DataFrame of the Plan and saves it to a CSV file, respectively.
Removed the print_plan() function and replaced it by printing the string representation of the dataframe created by to_df().

Added a bunch of features, like the big overhaul of the Observation object and moving many of the tasks to the Scheduler.
Added option to set an end time for a schedule (to only schedule part of the night).
Many other things I don’t remember (I just created this file to keep track of the changes).