The Helioviewer Project Blog » General

Local network problems causing data lag and possible accessibility issues

jack — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:11:47 +0000

We are currently experiencing some issues with our local network. Users of helioviewer.org may experience some difficulties in reaching the site, and users of JHelioviewer may experience difficulties in streaming data. The network problems are also making it difficult for us to acquire the most recent images; hence, SDO AIA and HMI images are currently lagging well behind near real-time.

Our network engineers are aware of these problems, and are working on them. We apologize for the interruptions to our services. We will be back to normal operations as soon as possible.

Helioviewer Team.

JHelioviewer 2.2.1 Released

Daniel Müller — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:39:36 +0000

A new version of JHelioviewer is available for download. What’s new? This update release contains improved movie export functionality, an updated LASCO C2 coronagraph mask, the new SDO Cutout Service plug-in plus various bug fixes.

The new movie export menu makes it easier to set the exact scaling of the area you are interested in, and the processing itself is now performed on the graphics card using OpenGL:

The SDO Cutout Service plug-in allows you to request science-quality image data from the SDO/AIA and HMI instruments for the region of interest and time range selected in JHelioviewer:

Helioviewer.org 2.3.0 Released

keith — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 20:26:13 +0000

A new version of Helioviewer.org has been released including better movie customization, support for embedding Helioviewer.org in remote sites, and a number of performance and bug fixes.

Support has been added for embedding Helioviewer.org into third-party websites, and JSONP support makes it easier for new versions of the front-end to be created which interact with the main Helioviewer.org back-end. Similarly, the front-end has been rewritten to allow for easier creation of custom front-end clients without having to re-implement a tiling system, etc.

The back-end movie queuing system has been ported from Ruby to PHP to allow for better integration with the rest of the back-end, and the movies table structure has been modified for improved time estimation and similarity searching. Additional options (frame-rate and movie length) are offered to allow users further control over the movies they create and the duration option has been moved to a more obvious location.

Let us know what you think, or if you have any suggestions. Feedback is always welcome.

RELEASE NOTES:

Helioviewer.2.3.0 includes several new features to give users more control over how the site behaves. Let us know what you think, or if you have any suggestions. Feedback is always welcome.

New features:

* JSONP support
* Added option display date from last visit when returning to Helioviewer.org
* Added setting to automatically update images every 5 minutes
* Added support for embedding Helioviewer.org in other websites
* Added support for specifying frame-rate or duration during movie creation
* Added support for PROBA-2 SWAP data
* Created an installer diagnostic script
* Added support for tracking custom events in Google Analytics
* Movie and screenshot selection rectangle preserved during visit
* Data availability information included in getDateSources response

Bug fixes:

* Fixed bug #691356 JPX Summary file does not exist
* Fixed bug #783497 Port Helioqueuer to PHP
* Fixed bug #903360 Error occurs for certain layer orders when attempting to create AIA/LASCO
* Fixed bug #925542 The minimum width of the display window is too big
* Fixed bug #624857 After clicking “clear history” unfinished requests are still processed, and download links displayed
* Fixed bug #885795 Add image attribution to about dialog
* Fixed bug #888269 Attempt to normalize movie frame-rate instead of duration when possible
* Fixed bug #909795 Normalize date strings for API requests
* Fixed bug #909897 Mark movies that have not finished in less than x hours as Error
* Fixed bug #930628 Improve movie creation time estimation
* Fixed bug #942547 Validate value for dsun before attempting to process in front-side
* Fixed bug #609219 API should return an error message when an invalid parameter is specified in a request
* Fixed bug #783481 Report mouse coordinates immediately upon activation
* Fixed bug #787744 Add a checkSettings method to the UserSettings class to verify user settings integrity
* Fixed bug #876707 Included creation_time in FFmpeg metadata for mp4/webm movies
* Fixed bug #789515 Reduce filesize of WebM movies

Library updates:

* Flowplayer (3.2.7 => 3.2.8)
* jQuery (1.7.0 => 1.7.2)
* jQuery UI (1.8.16 => 1.8.18)
* jQuery.JSON (2.2 => 2.3)
* jQuery imgAreaSelect (0.9.5 => 0.9.8)

SDO data lag

jack — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 13:54:54 +0000

As you may have noticed, we are currently experiencing a lag in the availability of SDO images. The lag is happening upstream of Helioviewer. The Helioviewer Project provides images of scientific data. The science data is beamed down from the spacecraft , to a dedicated ground station (as outlined here) in New Mexico. The packets of data are first re-assembled to form the raw science data, and then have some corrections applied to yield data suitable for science applications. Data is constantly streaming off the spacecraft and being processed through this pipeline, which involves many different locations and institutions.

One of those science applications is visualization of the data. The Helioviewer Project takes that science data and converts those data to JPEG2000 images, which we then make available via www.helioviewer.org and www.jhelioviewer.org. We have to have the science data available to make the JPEG2000 images.

As soon as new SDO-AIA and HMI images become available, we will make them available to you. We regret the interruption to the stream of SDO data. Other data-sets are unaffected, and are available as usual.

Spiralling eruption close to the south pole

jack — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:37:19 +0000

A colleague who works with LASCO data yesterday found this lovely spiralling eruption close to the south pole.

It’s a great example of how the magnetic field can influence the dynamics of erupting plasma. The eruption starts around 00:13 in the above video.

Server Maintenance: Thursday, March 15 (14:00-16:00 UT)

keith — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:43:43 +0000

Helioviewer.org and JHelioviewer will be unavailable on Thursday, March 15 from approximately 14:00UT – 16:00UT for planned server maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Coronal mass ejection and auroral activity, 24-25th January 2012

jack — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:46:35 +0000

The coronal mass ejection associated with the flare event of 23 January 2012 has just been spotted by the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft. ACE orbits the L1 libration point which is a point of Earth-Sun gravitational equilibrium about 1.5 million km from Earth and 148.5 million km from the Sun. From its location at L1 ACE has a prime view of the solar wind, interplanetary magnetic field and higher energy particles accelerated by the Sun, as well as particles accelerated in the heliosphere and the galactic regions beyond.

You can check here for recent observations of the distribution of the aurora borealis from space, courtesy of the NOAA Polar Operational Environmental Satellite. NOAA also have a test data product and webpage that shows the output of a model that predicts the probability of seeing the aurora. You can keep informed on the latest space weather activity at NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center and the Integrated Space Weather Laboratory.

Here are some more movies of the original event shared by our users – thanks to everyone!

YouTube and Helioviewer.org user losyziemi shared this video of the eruption and the consequent view in LASCO C2 and C3. Those streaks and dots are due to particles accelerated by the event impacting the detectors of LASCO C2 and C3

YouTube and Helioviewer.org user otraLoly shared this video of the eruption, concentrating on AIA 171 and LASCO C2.

Service resumed; geomagnetic storm predicted for Tuesday January 24th

jack — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:03:24 +0000

As you will already know since you are reading this, Helioviewer Project services have now returned to nominal operations earlier than anticipated. Thanks to all those concerned for their work and for keeping the downtime to a minimum!

Just before our scheduled outage, many of our users caught sight of a flaring active region (videos below). Well, since then the Solar Weather Prediction Center

“has issued a Geomagnetic Storm Watch with G2 level storming likely and G3 level storming possible, with the storm continuing into Wednesday, Jan 25. All of this activity is related to a moderate (R2) Radio Blackout x-ray flare that erupted Sunday night (11pm EST).”

which the self-same flaring event spotted by our users. This is a developing story – please consult the Solar Weather Prediction Center for more updates on the progress of the storm. There is great animation of the predicted progress of the coronal mass ejection through interplanetary space as it comes towards Earth here. Geomagnetic storms are temporary disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field; this one is predicted to be moderate, possibly strong. On average, there are a few of these every year; the good news is that if you haven’t noticed one before, you’re probably not going to notice this one.

I’ve included some videos of the flaring event below, made by Helioviewer users and shared with Helioviewer and YouTube users – thanks everyone!

YouTube user Idontwannastopat6

Nice close-up of the flare in SDO/AIA 304 ansgtrom from YouTube user 666redwater.

YouTube user 666redwater also made a zoomed-out video of this event using the SDO/AIA 131 filter. In this filter you see very different structures compared to SDO/AIA 304 and 171. There are a total of 10 filters of AIA, each of them telling us something different about the structure of the sun’s atmosphere.

YouTube users MeireRuiz7 and usog180 shared these wide-angle SDO/AIA 304 movies.

Scheduled service outage, Monday 23rd January, 13:30 – 21:00 UT

jack — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:02:14 +0000

All Helioviewer Project services (www.helioviewer.org, JHelioviewer, and the API) will be unavailable Monday 23rd January, 13:30 – 21:00 UT (2:30pm – 11pm, CET; 8.30am – 5pm, EST ; 5:30am – 2pm, PST) due to scheduled maintenance at our facility. Helioviewer Project services should be available again after about 21:00 UT. We apologize for this interruption to our services.

Recent LASCO, EIT, COR1/2 images available again

jack — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:47:05 +0000

Recent images from the LASCO, EIT, COR1/2 instruments are now available again. We will be filling in the missing images over the coming days. We apologize for the interruption in providing these images.