# Standard units¶

Standard units are defined in the astropy.units package as object instances.

All units are defined in term of basic ‘irreducible’ units. The irreducible units include:

• Length (meter)
• Time (second)
• Mass (kilogram)
• Current (ampere)
• Temperature (Kelvin)
• Luminous intensity (candela)
• Stellar magnitude (mag)
• Amount of substance (mole)
• Photon count (photon)

(There are also some more obscure base units required by the FITS standard that are no longer recommended for use.)

Units that involve combinations of fundamental units are instances of CompositeUnit. In most cases, one does not need to worry about the various kinds of unit classes unless one wants to design a more complex case.

There are many units already predefined in the module. One may use the find_equivalent_units method to list all the existing predefined units of a given type:

>>> from astropy import units as u
>>> u.g.find_equivalent_units()
Primary name | Unit definition | Aliases
[
M_e          | 9.10938e-31 kg  |                                  ,
M_p          | 1.67262e-27 kg  |                                  ,
earthMass    | 5.9742e+24 kg   | M_earth, Mearth                  ,
g            | 0.001 kg        | gram                             ,
jupiterMass  | 1.8987e+27 kg   | M_jup, Mjup, M_jupiter, Mjupiter ,
kg           | irreducible     | kilogram                         ,
solMass      | 1.9891e+30 kg   | M_sun, Msun                      ,
t            | 1000 kg         | tonne                            ,
u            | 1.66054e-27 kg  | Da, Dalton                       ,
]


## The dimensionless unit¶

In addition to these units, astropy.units includes the concept of the dimensionless unit, used to indicate quantities that don’t have a physical dimension. This is distinct in concept from a unit that is equal to None: that indicates that no unit was specified in the data or by the user.

For convenience, there is a unit that is both dimensionless and unscaled: the dimensionless_unscaled object:

>>> from astropy import units as u
>>> u.dimensionless_unscaled
Unit(dimensionless)


Dimensionless quantities are often defined as products or ratios of quantities that are not dimensionless, but whose dimensions cancel out when their powers are multiplied. For example:

>>> u.m / u.m
Unit(dimensionless)


For compatibility with the supported unit string formats, this is equivalent to Unit('') and Unit(1), though using u.dimensionless_unscaled in Python code is preferred for readability:

>>> u.dimensionless_unscaled == u.Unit('')
True
>>> u.dimensionless_unscaled == u.Unit(1)
True


Note that in many cases, a dimensionless unit may also have a scale. For example:

>>> (u.km / u.m).decompose()
Unit(dimensionless with a scale of 1000.0)
>>> (u.km / u.m).decompose() == u.dimensionless_unscaled
False


To determine if a unit is dimensionless (but regardless of the scale), use the physical_type property:

>>> (u.km / u.m).physical_type
u'dimensionless'
>>> # This also has a scale, so it is not the same as u.dimensionless_unscaled
>>> (u.km / u.m) == u.dimensionless_unscaled
False
>>> # However, (u.m / u.m) has a scale of 1.0, so it is the same
>>> (u.m / u.m) == u.dimensionless_unscaled
True


## Enabling other units¶

By default, only the “default” units are searched by find_equivalent_units and similar methods that do searching. This includes SI, CGS and astrophysical units. However, one may wish to enable the imperial or other user-defined units.

For example, to enable Imperial units, simply do:

>>> from astropy.units import imperial
>>> imperial.enable()
>>> u.m.find_equivalent_units()
Primary name | Unit definition | Aliases
[
AU           | 1.49598e+11 m   | au, astronomical_unit ,
Angstrom     | 1e-10 m         | AA, angstrom          ,
cm           | 0.01 m          | centimeter            ,
ft           | 0.3048 m        | foot                  ,
fur          | 201.168 m       | furlong               ,
inch         | 0.0254 m        |                       ,
lyr          | 9.46073e+15 m   | lightyear             ,
m            | irreducible     | meter                 ,
mi           | 1609.34 m       | mile                  ,
micron       | 1e-06 m         |                       ,
mil          | 2.54e-05 m      | thou                  ,
nmi          | 1852 m          | nauticalmile, NM      ,
pc           | 3.08568e+16 m   | parsec                ,
solRad       | 6.95508e+08 m   | R_sun, Rsun           ,
yd           | 0.9144 m        | yard                  ,
]


This may also be used with the with statement, to temporarily enable additional units:

>>> from astropy import units as u
>>> from astropy.units import imperial
>>> with imperial.enable():
...     print(u.m.find_equivalent_units())
Primary name | Unit definition | Aliases
...


To enable just specific units, use add_enabled_units:

>>> from astropy import units as u
>>> from astropy.units import imperial