APLpy in non-interactive mode

While APLpy can be easily used to interactively make plots, it is also possible to make plots without opening up a display. This can be useful to run APLpy remotely, or to write non-interactive scripts to plot one or many FITS files.

Running APLpy in non-interactive mode

To run APLpy in non-interactive mode, you will need to change the ‘backend’ used by matplotlib from an interactive (e.g. WxAgg, TkAgg, MacOS X) to a non-interactive (e.g. Agg, Cairo, PS, PDF) backend. The default backend is typically set in your .matplotlibrc file (or if you do not have such a file, an interactive backend is usually chosen by default). The easiest way to change the backend temporarily is to use the matplotlib.use() function:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('Agg')

It is important to change the backend via matplotlib.use before the aplpy module is imported. Once the backend has been changed, any call to FITSFigure() will no longer make a figure window appear. The following script can be used to make a PNG plot:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('Agg')

import aplpy

f = aplpy.FITSFigure('mips_24micron.fits')
f.show_grayscale()
f.save('mips_24.png')

Pan/Zoom in non-interactive mode

One of the advantages of using APLpy in interactive mode is the ability to zoom in on a given region of interest. To replicate this functionality in non-interactive mode, the FITSFigure.recenter() method can be used. This method takes a central position, and either a radius (to make a square plot) or a width/height (to make a rectangular plot). This is illustrated in the following example:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('Agg')

import aplpy

f = aplpy.FITSFigure('mips_24micron.fits')
f.show_grayscale()
f.recenter(266.2142,-29.1832,width=0.5,height=0.3)
f.save('mips_24_zoomin.png')

Batch scripting

Using APLpy non-interactively can be useful for making plots of many FITS files. Given a directory fits/ containing FITS files, the following code will generate on plot for each .fits file:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('Agg')

import aplpy

import glob
import os

for fits_file in glob.glob(os.path.join('fits/','*.fits')):

    f = aplpy.FITSFigure(fits_file)
    f.show_grayscale()
    f.save(fits_file.replace('.fits','.png'))
    f.close()