# Best performance for decomposing SkyCoord?

**URL:** <https://community.openastronomy.org/t/best-performance-for-decomposing-skycoord/597>\
**Category:** Astropy\
**Created:** [March 5, 2023, 4:12pm UTC](https://community.openastronomy.org/t/best-performance-for-decomposing-skycoord/597 "2023-03-05T16:12:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dmehring](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/community.openastronomy.org/dmehring/32/335_2.png) [@dmehring](https://community.openastronomy.org/u/dmehring)\
**Post date:** [March 5, 2023, 4:12pm UTC](https://community.openastronomy.org/t/best-performance-for-decomposing-skycoord/597/1 "2023-03-05T16:12:51Z")

</div>

I have an N x N pixel image and I’d like to compute the numerical values of RA and Dec for each of the N\*\*2 pixels.

```auto
import astropy.wcs

n = 200
wcs_dict = {
     'CTYPE1': 'RA---SIN', 'CUNIT1': 'arcmin', 'CDELT1':-1.0,
     'CRPIX1': n/2 + 1, 'CRVAL1': 0, 'NAXIS1': n,
     'CTYPE2': 'DEC--SIN', 'CUNIT2': 'arcmin', 'CDELT2': 1.0,
     'CRPIX2': n/2 + 1, 'CRVAL2': 0, 'NAXIS2': n
}
w = astropy.wcs.WCS(wcs_dict)
d = list(range(n))
x = []
y = []
for i in range(n):
    x.extend(n * [i])
    y.extend(d)
coords = w.pixel_to_world(x,y)
ra = []
dec = []
for c in coords:
     ra.append(c.ra.arcmin)
     dec.append(c.dec.arcmin)

```

Computing coords takes a couple of tens of milliseconds, which is great. However, assembling the ra and dec lists takes several tens of seconds, and of course gets quickly worse as n increases.

Is there a way to do this that gives significantly higher performance?  
Thanks

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ayshih](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/community.openastronomy.org/ayshih/32/84_2.png) [@ayshih](https://community.openastronomy.org/u/ayshih)\
**Post date:** [March 6, 2023, 4:25am UTC](https://community.openastronomy.org/t/best-performance-for-decomposing-skycoord/597/2 "2023-03-06T04:25:21Z")

</div>

You don’t need to iterate through the `SkyCoord` instance (`coords`) returned by `w.pixel_to_world(x, y)`. You can access the component arrays directly:

```auto
ra = coords.ra.arcmin
dec = coords.dec.arcmin

```

Note that these are NumPy arrays rather than lists, but if you need lists for whatever reason, you can simply wrap each of the above calls in a `list()` constructor.

Incidentally, you can also speed up the construction of `x` and `y` by using NumPy rather than creating lists:

```auto
import numpy as np
x, y = np.indices(w.array_shape)

```

Note that these are 2D rather than 1D, but if you need 1D, you can simply:

```auto
x = x.ravel()
y = y.ravel()

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Cadair](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/community.openastronomy.org/cadair/32/422_2.png) [@Cadair](https://community.openastronomy.org/u/Cadair)\
**Post date:** [March 6, 2023, 4:32am UTC](https://community.openastronomy.org/t/best-performance-for-decomposing-skycoord/597/3 "2023-03-06T04:32:22Z")

</div>

Additionally, if you aren’t interested in the actual `SkyCoord` object and just want arrays / lists of the coordinates you can use the `wcs.pixel_to_world_values` method.

Making this the fastest way I can think of to do what you want:

```python
x, y = np.indicies(w.array_shape)
ra, dec = w.world_to_pixel_values(x, y)

```