Using HelioScope

Helioscope is an Astrogrid tool that queries Heliospheric datasets for data in a time range specified by the user.

Helioscope gives access to several solar data products, including images from the Virtual Solar Observatory (VSO) and magnetograms from SOHO/MDI. It also queries time series data held as part of the NASA CDAW service.

Searching for data

You can specify a start and end time for your Helioscope search either by typing into the boxes (times must be in the format 2005-07-31T01:00:00) or by clicking on the drop-down icon next to the times and using the Calendar interface (click on a day in the Calendar to select it, double-click on the hour or minute or second, then use the arrows to change the times).

Click on Search to start the search. As data centers reply to the Helioscope request, new nodes are added to the display window.

To view the results returned from the search for a given dataset, single-click on the node showing the dataset name. Child nodes display instrument information. Each final node, displaying a time string, represents a single data file. The time displayed in this node is the start time of the data in the file.

To go back to the initial view of the Helioscope results, click on Go to Top.

Hovering the mouse over a node displays additional information on the dataset or data file.

By default, the information is displayed as Radial Graph. Under View, you can select one of the other two possible options of displaying the results: as Hyperbolic Graph or as Services table. The Services Table is a simple list of the data archives that have been queried and of the number of data returns for each data archive.

Selecting files

To select a single file, double-click on its corresponding node: the node will be highligted in yellow.

Double-click on more nodes to add more files.

If you double-click on a dataset name, all the child nodes (i.e. files) for that dataset are selected.

The Clear Selection button is used to clear previous selections. To deselect a file, double-click on the corresponding node.

Saving files

Having selected the files, click on Download. A dialogue will open asking you to choose the directory where to save the files. This can be either on your local machine, or in your VOSpace (to save to VOSpace you need an !Astrogrid account). The filename will be set automatically by Helioscope and it will contain the dataset name and start time of the data in the file.

Viewing solar images returned by Helioscope

Solar images returned by Helioscope can be visualised using the Aladin application. This works for solar images that are simple fits images, eg for SOHO/EIT or SOHO/MDI or SOHO/LASCO. Data cubse, such as TRACE data files, or Hinode/EIS files, will not display in Aladin.

Launch Aladin. Helioscope will know that the application is ready to receive fits images and Aladin icons will appear in the Helioscope window.

To send an image from Helioscope to Aladin, select the image, then choose from the top menu: 'Result', then 'Attempt to send FITs to Aladin'.

See also: Reference Help for HelioScope.