pixfoot
: Generates Multi-Order Coverage maps
pixfoot
takes a list of sky positions from an input
table and generates a pixel map describing a sky region which includes
them all.
Currently the output is to a format known as a
Multi-Order Coverage map (MOC),
which is a HEALPix-based format composed of a list of HEALPix pixels
of different sizes, which can efficiently describe complex regions.
Other output formats may be introduced in the future.
The mocshape
command
does a similar job, but can also work with input columns representing
shapes that are not just points or circles,
and offers different MOC generation implementations
that may be more efficient when working with very large input tables.
See also the Coverage class for MOC-related functions.