Colour schemes used to present data on sphere - python-2.7

Question

Hi I a have a data set which I project onto a sphere such that the magnitude of the data, as a function of theta and phi, is shown using a colour spectrum (which uses "ax.plot_surface", "plt.colorbar" and "facecolors"). My query is that at this stage I am limited to "cm.hot" and "cm.jet". Does anyone know of any other colour schemes which are available for this purpose. Please see my code and the figures below
Code:
from numpy import*
import math
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib import cm
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.cm as cm
#theta inclination angle
#phi azimuthal angle
n_theta = 100 #number of values for theta
n_phi = 100 #number of values for phi
r = 1 #radius of sphere
theta, phi = np.mgrid[0: pi:n_theta*1j,-pi:pi:n_phi*1j ]
x = r*np.sin(theta)*np.cos(phi)
y = r*np.sin(theta)*np.sin(phi)
z = r*np.cos(theta)
inp = []
f = open("data.dat","r")
for line in f:
i = float(line.split()[0])
j = float(line.split()[1])
val = float(line.split()[2])
inp.append([i, j, val])
inp = np.array(inp)
#reshape the input array to the shape of the x,y,z arrays.
c = inp[:,2].reshape((n_phi,n_theta))
#Set colours and render
fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10, 8))
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')
#use facecolors argument, provide array of same shape as z
# cm.<cmapname>() allows to get rgba color from array.
# array must be normalized between 0 and 1
surf = ax.plot_surface(
x,y,z, rstride=1, cstride=1, facecolors=cm.jet(c), alpha=0.9, linewidth=1, shade=False)
ax.set_xlim([-2.0,2.0])
ax.set_ylim([-2.0,2.0])
ax.set_zlim([-2,2])
ax.set_aspect("equal")
plt.title('Plot with cm.jet')
#Label axis.
ax.set_xlabel('X')
ax.set_ylabel('Y')
ax.set_zlabel('Z')
#Creates array for colorbar from 0 to 1.
a = array( [1.0, 0.5, 0.0])
#Creates colorbar
m = cm.ScalarMappable(cmap=cm.jet)
m.set_array(a)
plt.colorbar(m)
plt.savefig('facecolor plots')
f.close()
plt.show()

Answer 1

The following is a list of colormaps provided directly by matplotlib. It's taken from the Colormap reference example.
cmaps = [('Perceptually Uniform Sequential', [
'viridis', 'plasma', 'inferno', 'magma', 'cividis']),
('Sequential', [
'Greys', 'Purples', 'Blues', 'Greens', 'Oranges', 'Reds',
'YlOrBr', 'YlOrRd', 'OrRd', 'PuRd', 'RdPu', 'BuPu',
'GnBu', 'PuBu', 'YlGnBu', 'PuBuGn', 'BuGn', 'YlGn']),
('Sequential (2)', [
'binary', 'gist_yarg', 'gist_gray', 'gray', 'bone', 'pink',
'spring', 'summer', 'autumn', 'winter', 'cool', 'Wistia',
'hot', 'afmhot', 'gist_heat', 'copper']),
('Diverging', [
'PiYG', 'PRGn', 'BrBG', 'PuOr', 'RdGy', 'RdBu',
'RdYlBu', 'RdYlGn', 'Spectral', 'coolwarm', 'bwr', 'seismic']),
('Qualitative', [
'Pastel1', 'Pastel2', 'Paired', 'Accent',
'Dark2', 'Set1', 'Set2', 'Set3',
'tab10', 'tab20', 'tab20b', 'tab20c']),
('Miscellaneous', [
'flag', 'prism', 'ocean', 'gist_earth', 'terrain', 'gist_stern',
'gnuplot', 'gnuplot2', 'CMRmap', 'cubehelix', 'brg', 'hsv',
'gist_rainbow', 'rainbow', 'jet', 'nipy_spectral', 'gist_ncar'])]
To easily view them all you may e.g. use the following 3D colormap viewer (written in PyQt5).
import numpy as np
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
from PyQt5 import QtGui, QtCore, QtWidgets
from matplotlib.backends.backend_qt5agg import FigureCanvasQTAgg as FigureCanvas
from matplotlib.figure import Figure
import sys
class MainWindow(QtWidgets.QMainWindow):
def __init__(self):
QtWidgets.QMainWindow.__init__(self)
self.main_widget = QtWidgets.QWidget(self)
self.fig = Figure()
self.canvas = FigureCanvas(self.fig)
self.ax = self.fig.add_subplot(111, projection=Axes3D.name)
u = np.linspace(0, 2 * np.pi, 100)
v = np.linspace(0, np.pi, 100)
x = 10 * np.outer(np.cos(u), np.sin(v))
y = 10 * np.outer(np.sin(u), np.sin(v))
z = 10 * np.outer(np.ones(np.size(u)), np.cos(v))
# Plot the surface
self.surf = self.ax.plot_surface(x, y, z, cmap="YlGnBu")
self.cb = self.fig.colorbar(self.surf)
self.canvas.setSizePolicy(QtWidgets.QSizePolicy.Expanding,
QtWidgets.QSizePolicy.Expanding)
self.canvas.updateGeometry()
self.dropdown1 = QtWidgets.QComboBox()
items = []
for cats in cmaps:
items.extend(cats[1])
self.dropdown1.addItems(items)
self.dropdown1.currentIndexChanged.connect(self.update)
self.label = QtWidgets.QLabel("A plot:")
self.layout = QtWidgets.QGridLayout(self.main_widget)
self.layout.addWidget(QtWidgets.QLabel("Select Colormap"))
self.layout.addWidget(self.dropdown1)
self.layout.addWidget(self.canvas)
self.setCentralWidget(self.main_widget)
self.show()
self.update()
def update(self):
self.surf.set_cmap(self.dropdown1.currentText())
self.fig.canvas.draw_idle()
if __name__ == '__main__':
app = QtWidgets.QApplication(sys.argv)
win = MainWindow()
sys.exit(app.exec_())