Re: [Matplotlib-users] Generating N regularly spaced points on a sphere

[Andrew S. <str...@as...>]

Jeff Whitaker wrote:
> Zane Selvans wrote:
>> Is there a method built into Numpy/SciPy or friends that will generate
>> a set of N points evenly (regularly - not randomly) sampling the
>> entire surface of a sphere?  I imagine people doing GCMs and other
>> geoscience in spherical coordinates have to do this pretty frequently,
>> so I'm sure someone's written it in Python somewhere.  My searches
>> aren't turning anything up immediately though.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Zane
>>
>>   
> Zane:  This one has puzzled mathematicians for centuries - there is no 
> evenly spaced set of points on a sphere.  The golden section spiral (or 
> fibonacci) points are easy to code  (see code below), but don't form the 
> vertices of polygons.  For modelling, where you need the points to be 
> vertices of polygons, hexagonal icosahedral grid are typically used (see 
> http://kiwi.atmos.colostate.edu/BUGS/geodesic/), but they are tricky to 
> compute (I don't have any python code handy).

I'm attaching some code I wrote to subdivide and icosahedron for tiling
a sphere with hexagons (and the occasional pentagon).

-Andrew