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USNO IERS services going down for 6 months (SOLVED: Upgrade astropy) #9427
Description
There's a big red warning on both http://maia.usno.navy.mil/ and http://toshi.nofs.navy.mil/ saying that they will be down for maintenance from Oct. 24 2019 until April 30 2020 (6 months!).
I'm not sure if there are other sites that will serve the files astropy relies on, but I believe that these two are the only ones astropy currently looks at.
The astropy functionality that depends on the availability of these IERS tables is mission critical for several telescopes so I think we need some ways to handle this.
Activity
bsipocz commentedon Oct 22, 2019
@eteq @astrofrog - this seems to be critical enough to warrant a v2.0.16 (and maybe even a 3.2.3, too) once the solution is in
bmorris3 commentedon Oct 22, 2019
Just in case it changes, here's what the webpage warning says right now:
pllim commentedon Oct 22, 2019
We also need to be prepared for the possibility that the maintenance get prolonged beyond April 30 2020 into forever, ever, and ever...
pllim commentedon Oct 23, 2019
From @eteq on Slack:
It looks like we may want to use these as mirrors while IERS is offline:
loxlig commentedon Oct 29, 2019
What is the workaround for prevent scripts depending on astropy iers.py from failing when the IERS mirror is unavailable? What should happen if/when there are no IERS mirrors available but scripts absolutely must run. Perhaps there could be other reasons for an IERS mirror from being available not including a failure of the mirror. This seems like a potentially serious point of failure in order to satisfy only the dependency of accurate IERS data when there are many more parts to a script that must also be satisified.
pllim commentedon Oct 29, 2019
@loxlig , we changed the URLs to mirrors. If you update astropy to the latest releases, it should still work unless your firewall setting also blocks the mirrors.
For a more robust solution, a better caching mechanism in 4.0 would hopefully take care of offline use.
update astropy->v3.2.3 to fix IERS bug
[-]USNO IERS services going down for 6 months[/-][+]USNO IERS services going down for 6 months (SOLVED: Upgrade astropy)[/+]eteq commentedon Dec 5, 2019
To add one more note here for those who might come across this issue - there's a workaround that will work in older versions of astropy:
(or substitute in whatever other URL is the default in future Astropy versions if there's another change to what IERS/USNO recommend...)
pllim commentedon Jan 5, 2020
A note from USNO:
The USNO websites aa.usno.navy.mil, ad.usno.navy.mil, aristarchus.usno.navy.mil, maia.usno.navy.mil, rorf.usno.navy.mil, and toshi.usno.navy.mil are undergoing modernization efforts. The expected completion of the work and return of service is estimated as 30 April 2020. Please submit a requirements form to the USNOPAO if the information you are seeking is not accessible via other means.
If you are inconvenienced by this, use that form to let them know. They are trying to see the extend of the impact of these modernization efforts.
pllim commentedon Jan 24, 2020
USNO form has been moved to https://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/help/requirements-form -- FYI
p.s. Try reload several time if you get errors before giving up.