How should we handle catalogs that do not have unique source names

RadioAstronomySoftwareGroup / pyradiosky

Python objects and interfaces for representing diffuse, extended and compact astrophysical radio sources

https://pyradiosky.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

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How should we handle catalogs that do not have unique source names #158

Open bhazelton opened 2 years ago

bhazelton commented 2 years ago

This came up with both LoBES and GLEAM, which use RA & Dec to some precision to make the names (standard in astronomy). However, nearby distinct sources can end up with the same name and we need a way to distinguish them. But I don't really like changing (or not preserving in some way) the original names in the catalog. Maybe we need a new attribute?

bhazelton commented 2 years ago

One option is to have an optional attribute called "original_name" that gets filled if there are non-unique names and we modify the names to make them unique (with a warning). Then on write there could be an option to write out with the original names rather than our assigned ones.

Another option is to have an integer attribute which is only non-zero if there are any non-unique names and then it increases from zero for each new instance.