Main Page
From Virbo
Contents |
1 Introduction
Welcome to the version 1.0 alpha release of ViRBO. The "alpha" designation means that the infrastructure of the VxO is nearly complete. What remains is documentation of the API, completion of the ability to access a few additional data sets, and the ability to view data as spectrograms. For more information on pending developments, see Development Notes.
ViRBO (Virtual Radiation Belt Observatory) is one of the domain-specific virtual observatories that began operations in Fall, 2006 and is funded under the NASA Heliophysics Data Environment program. As part of this project, we have developed or extended existing codebases to form the following subprojects:
- ViRBO data - (this page) Access and visualize many radiation belt data sets.
- ViRBO metadata - Browse and search space physics metadata.
- VxOware - The metadata search and edit engine that ViRBO uses.
- Autoplot - Visualize many space science data resources.
- timeseries.org - A fast time series server of remote data sets.
2 Development Notes
In general, many ViRBO web pages are functional. Some features are not available for all data sets. This is noted in the Development Notes section. In addition, there are several projects that are still underway
- Allow plotting of spectrograms. At present only the option for plotting as time series is given, even when data are more naturally displayed as a spectrogram
- Option to plot data in Applet instead of as static png images
- Verification and review of metadata
- Documentation of the data API
- Documentation of the metadata API
- Addition of new data sets
- Hooks into L,L* calculator at CCMC.
3 ViRBO-accessible Data
ViRBO's ftp site is ftp://virbo.org. ViRBO's metadata site is http://virbo.org/virbo.
| AMIE-derived indices | Inventory | Geomagnetic indices derived from the AMIE model. | ||||
| Augsburg ULF Index | Inventory | A ULF index derived from ground magnetometer measurements. | ||||
| ISGI | Inventory | Geomagnetic indices aa, am, AE, AL, AU, AO; quiet day index. | ||||
| GEO Reanalysis | Inventory | O'Brien-Lemon GEO Reanalysis data set. | ||||
| OMNI2 | Inventory | The one-hour-resolution OMNI data set covering 1963-present. | ||||
| OMNIHR | Inventory | The one-minute-resolution OMNI data set covering 1995-present. | ||||
| GOES (via NGDC) | Inventory | GOES 05-12 X-Ray, mag. field, and particle data from NGDC. | ||||
| GOES-12 (via ONERA) | GOES 12 Processed and corrected GOES 12 particle data from ONERA. | |||||
| HEO | Data from the HEO-1 and HEO-3 satellites. | |||||
| LANL (via LANL) | LANL 1991-080, LANL1989-046, LANLLANL-01A particle data from LANL. | |||||
| OV | OV1-19 and OV3-3 particle measurements from Aerospace. | |||||
| PC Index | Inventory | Thule and Vostok polar cap index. | ||||
| POES (via NGDC) | POES 15-18 and MetOp particle and support data from NGDC. | |||||
| POES (via CDAWeb) | Inventory | POES 05-14 particle and support data from CDAWeb. | ||||
| SAMPEX (via SRL) | SAMPEX Data from the SAMPEX Data Center | |||||
| SAMPEX (via S. Kanekal) | Daily-averaged and L-shell-binned SAMPEX MeV electron flux | |||||
4 Science Resources
4.1 News
- 2008 Fall AGU meeting posters and presentations: SAO/NASA ADS
- Search Google News for latest mentions of "Radiation Belt" html
- 1958 article in Time Magazine html
- Search Google News for historical mentions of "Radiation Belt" html
4.2 Meetings
- 2007 NGRSC Data Workshop, Lacanau, France
- 2007-2008 GEM Space Radiation Climatology Focus Group
- 2008 COSPAR/PRBEM
- 2008 Radiation Belts Saint Petersburg workshop
4.3 Recent Papers
- Very low-frequency radio waves drain Earth's inner radiation belt of satellite-killing electrons, Physics Today [1]
4.4 About the Radiation Belt
4.4.1 History
- What is a Space Scientist? by James Van Allen: archive.org
- Hess, Wilmont N., The Radiation Belt and Magnetosphere, 1968. google books Contains a detailed history of the discovery of the radiation belts and an overview of the many research results in the preceding ten years.
- Discovering Earth's Radiation Belts: Remembering Explorer 1 and 3 by F. McDonald and J. E. Naugle pdf
4.4.2 Books
- Alfven and Falthammar, Cosmological Electrodynamics, 1963. amazon
- Hess, Wilmont N., The Radiation Belt and Magnetosphere, 1968. Contains a detailed history of the discovery of the radiation belts and an overview of the many research results in the preceding ten years. google books
- Schultz and Lanzerotti, Particle Diffusion in the Radiation Belts, 1974. google books
- Walt, M., Introduction to Geomagnetically Trapped Radiation, Cambridge Univ. Press, New York, 1994. google books
4.4.3 Presentations
download .ppt The Earth's Radiation Belt by Baker, D.N., S.R. Elkington, X. Li at the Fall 2006 AGU SPA Tutorial
Show ppt here download .ppt Radiation Belt Redux: Science Objectives of the Radiation Belt Storm Probes Mission by H.E. Spence at the June 2007 GEM Student Tutorial
Show ppt here
5 VxO Resources
- Search on "Geophysical Year" in articles NASA/ADS
- Moving Beyond the IGY: The Electronic Geophysical Year (eGY) Concept NASA/ADS
- Informatics and the 2007-2008 Electronic Geophysical Year NASA/ADS
- http://hpde.gsfc.nasa.gov: NASA's Heliophysics Data Environment page and the proposed VxO framework: http://hpde.gsfc.nasa.gov/VO_Framework_7_Jan_05.html
- http://www.spase-group.org "... the SPASE (Space Physics Archive Search & Exchange) Consortium endeavors to create a common search and retrieve capability based on a common data dictionary and common search criteria."
- http://www.teamvxo.org "Team VxO is a community effort to share tools and code to support discipline oriented Virtual Observatories (VxO). All code and tools are publicly accessible and anyone can join Team VxO."
- http://autoplot.org Developed as part of the NASA-supported ViRBO project. "Autoplot is an interactive browser for data on the web. Give it a URL or a name of a file on your computer and it tries to create a sensible plot. It was developed to allow quick and interactive browsing of data and metadata."
- http://vxoware.org Developed as part of the NASA-supported ViRBO project. "VxOware is a content and data management system and is intended for use by a VxO or an entity that manages scientific data. In analogy to the VxO concept, in which data and services are united, VxOware unites software and tools for building an instance of a VxO in the Virtual Observatory network. VxOware has features such as system and user administration, interactive visualization tools, user-editable content, version tracking, and an integrated OPeNDAP server for data delivery."
- http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/ramadda/index.html "RAMADDA (Repository for Archiving, Managing and Accessing Diverse DAta) is a new development effort of the Unidata Program Center with the goal to provide an open and extensible data repository framework."
- http://hpde.gsfc.nasa.gov Heliophysics Data Environment "...Achieving the desired understanding requires easy access to data and tools from a distributed set of active archives, each of which has its own architecture and formats: together these data and tools form the core of the Heliophysics Data Environment (HPDE)."
- http://www.egy.org "An Earth and Space Science Information Commons Initiative: International Co-operation for Open Access to Data"
- Papers: http://www.springerlink.com/content/120988/?p=96fd6d11134d4b5bba3b9805b3fc3e9e&pi=0
6 Data Resources
- http://us-vo.org US National Virtual Observatory
- http://www.ipy.org IPY
- http://www.ipy.org/index.php?ipy/detail/icestar_ihy ICESTAR
- http://spdf.gsfc.nasa.gov: "The SPDF is a project of the Heliospheric Science Division (HSD) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. SPDF consists of web-based services for survey and high resolution data and trajectories. The Facility support data from most NASA Heliophysics missions to promote correlative and collaborative research across discipline and mission boundaries."
- http://vspo.gsfc.nasa.gov/ "The basic philosophy, shared with the Virtual Solar Observatory and many other such projects, is to register data products from disparate repositories using a common language that allows searching across datasets, retrieving data, and performing analysis and visualization in a uniform way."
- http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ "NASA's permanent archive for space science mission data."
- http://hpde.gsfc.nasa.gov/hpde_data_access.html HPDE list of Observatories
- http://vmo.nasa.gov/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,108 List of Data repositories in VMO git metadata repository
- http://space.augsburg.edu/space Augsburg
- http://www.srl.caltech.edu/sampex/DataCenter SAMPEX Data Center
- http://vspo.gsfc.nasa.gov/websearch/dispatcher VSPO
- http://vmo.nasa.gov VMO
- http://mist.engin.umich.edu/mist/vgmo/vgmo.html VGMO.NET
- http://gaia-vxo.org/index.html GAIA
- http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/vso VSO
- http://kate.nic.ualberta.ca:8000/portal/dt CSSDP
- http://spdf.gsfc.nasa.gov/ SPDF
- http://isdc.gfz-potsdam.de/index.php GFZ
- http://ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ CCMC
- http://www.spaceweather.eu spaceweather.eu
- http://www.ukssdc.ac.uk/sedat/ SEDAT
- http://vseo.space.swri.edu VSEO
- http://mexdata.space.swri.edu MEXDATA
- http://cluster2.space.swri.edu SWRI Cluster
- http://vmo.gsfc.nasa.gov VMO
- http://www.sec.noaa.gov/Data/index.html Space Environment Center
- http://ftpbrowser.gsfc.nasa.gov FTPBrowse
- http://gaia-vxo.org/ Global Auroral Imaging Access (GAIA)
- http://www.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/grid/egso European Grid of Solar Observations (EGSO)
- http://virtualsolar.org/ Virtual Solar Observatory
- http://vseo.space.swri.edu VSEO
- http://spc.igpp.ucla.edu/mcmac/data MCMAC
- http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/home/index.html
7 Software Resources
- http://autoplot.org "Autoplot is an interactive browser for data on the web. Give it a URL or a name of a file on your computer and it tries to create a sensible plot. It was developed to allow quick and interactive browsing of data and metadata."
- http://papco.org "PaPCo is IDL software for data visualization and analysis. It is modular, PaPCo modules built by various institutions and individuals plug into PaPCo core to provide data products. These modules provide graphic panels that are stacked on a time axis. About 60 modules exist, and 30 are supported as “core modules” that come with PaPCo. There are modules from 15+ spacecraft, including CRRES, Polar, Cassini and Cluster. Data from CDAWeb is plottable as well. The software is open-source, making it very flexible and well-suited for science use."
- IRBEM (Formerly ONERA DESP) This software library contains MATLAB and IDL wrappers to various geomagnetic field models. With this library, one can compute the magnetic coordinates (i.e., L, L*) at any location in Earth's magnetosphere.
- AE-8/AP-8
- SIZM A radiation belt proton, antiproton, and secondary model.
- Tsyganenko Magnetic Field Models
- Tsyganenko's web page: http://geo.phys.spbu.ru/~tsyganenko/modeling.html
- CCMC page: http://ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov/models/modelinfo.php?model=Tsyganenko%20Model
- SPENVIS Given a spacecraft trajectory or a coordinate grid, it calculates geomagnetic coordinates. trapped proton and electron fluxes, solar proton fluences, and many other parameters.
- ModelWeb Run various ionospheric, geomagnetic, and magnetospheric models from a web interface.
- "AF-GEOSPACE is a user-friendly, graphics-intensive software program bringing together many of the space environment models, applications, and data visualization products developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory and others in the space weather community."
