The Virtual Heliospheric Observatory

VHO

Adam Szabo, Tom Narock, Jan Merka,Aaron Roberts, Jon Vandegriff, George Ho,

Jim Raines, Peter Schroeder, Andrew Davis,and Justin Kasper

The VHO Team

Adam Szabo (lead) NASA/GSFCAndrew Davis CaltechGeorge Ho JHU/APLJustin Kasper MITJan Merka U. Maryland, Baltimore CountyThomas Narock U. Maryland, Baltimore CountyJim Raines U. MichiganKathryn Rash NASA/GSFCD. Aaron Roberts NASA/GSFCPeter Schroeder U. California, BerkeleyJon Vandegriff JHU/APL

Collaborators:

Paul Gazis SETI Institute Richard Keller NASA/ARCNeal Hurlburt Lockheed Martin SAL Shawn Wolfe NASA/ARC

Team membership is dynamic as new data products and services will be added.

VHO Basics

• The primary objective of the VHO is to enable scientists to search for, locate and efficiently use distributed heliospheric data sets.

• One stop shopping for heliospheric data• Rapid access to data products still at PI sites• Uniform description of data products (metadata)• Complex searches over all data products and VxOs• Linking to relevant software tools (HelioSoft) and

services.• Common data environment to simplify user software

development• Support for the emergence of new multi-instrument

merged data products

Spacecraft Instrument Description Max Resolution Time Span

WIND MFI Magnetic field 3 sec 1994-PresentSWE Thermal plasma (p, Alpha, anisotropy) 92 sec 1995-PresentSWE e distribution functions 92 sec 1995-Present3DP Proton moments 3 sec 1995-Present3DP Electron Moments 3 sec 1995-Present3DP p low energy spectra 24 sec 1995-Present3DP p high energy spectra 92 sec 1995-Present3DP e pitch angle distributions 92 sec 1995-Present3DP e low energy spectra 92 sec 1995-PresentSTICS Suprathermal ion distribution functions 1 day 2005EPACT Low energy particle sectored counts 1 hour Events

ACE MAG Magnetic field 16 sec / 1 sec 1997-PresentSWEPAM Solar wind ions 64 sec 1998-PresentCRIS Galactic cosmic rays 1 hour 1998-PresentSIS SEP, GCR and ACR intensities 1 hour 1998-PresentSWICS/SWIMS Solar wind composition 12 min 1998-PresentEPAM Solar energetic particles 10 sec 1998-Present

SoHO CELIAS/PM Solar wind ions 30 sec 1996-PresentGenesis GIM Solar wind ions 2.5 min 2001-2004

BPROXY Magnetic field direction 2.5 min 2001-2004IMP 8 MAG Magnetic field 15 sec 1973-2000

PLS Solar wind ions 1 min 1973-2000Helios 1 E1/E2 Mag field + solar wind ions 40 sec 1974-1985Helios 2 E1/E2 Mag field + solar wind ions 40 sec 1976-1980STEREO A/B MAG Magnetic field 0.125 sec 2006-Present

PLASTIC Solar Wind ions 2006-PresentUlysses VHM Magnetic field 1 sec 1990-Present

BAI Solar wind ions 4 min 1990-PresentMGS MAG Solar wind pressure estimate 2 hour 1999-2004

Initial VHO Data Sets

Web Interface

• Professional web design

• Update/News info

• Collaboration tools

VHO Web Interface – Query Builder

Searches by:

Time• Date/Time

S/C Location• GSE/GSM/HCI

Measurement Type• e.g., magnetic field, thermal plasma, energetic particles

Parameter Values

Selecttime period

Selectquery parameters

Selectlogical operation

Query ResultsTime periods

satisfying the query are returned

Matching product identified

Links to the data granules provided

Links to the SPASE metadata

provided

New Developments

• Autoplot (see next few slides)• SPASEQL, a language for cross-VxO queries,

for example VHO<->VMO• Internal database optimizations for speed• Event lists being added• Ever more data products added – often products

that would not have been discovered through traditional portals like CDAWeb

• Web design improvements

Autoplot

Dynamic on-the-fly plotting becoming

available

Autoplot Features

• Zooming• Scaling• Multi-panel plots• Cuts through spectrograms• Scanning through data spanning multiple

days/files• ASCII translations• Learn more at: http://www.autoplot.org/• ..\PLASTIC2009

Some Reasons Data Providers Participate

• Query builder allows complex science-driven searches across missions based on physical quantities, time, spacecraft location, etc. (in other words it delivers their data to people who need it)

• Autoplot allows users to browse these data relatively painlessly

• Access to future planned web services such as bundling multiple files, coordinate transformations, reaveraging, advanced plotting (Visbard), etc.

http://vho.nasa.gov

Check it out!

Backup Slides

Instrument Metadata

Human readable, formatted metadata

Links to SPASE XML files

Product Metadata

Parameter Information

Detailed information providedfor all parameters inside thereturned data files.

Granule Metadata

Information provided oneach data granule andchecksum for downloadintegrity.

VHO API

• IDL VM Demo software

• Library Perl Java CoSEC IDL (soon)

• Downloadable IDL VM application demonstrating the use of the VHO API.

VHO API

VSPO usingthe VHO API todeliver Helios 1,2data