The Citizen Scientist

Many readers of The Citizen Scientist already know how the Sun affects weather on Earth and the entire solar system. Amateur scientists can perform various observations to study solar activity, and you can even get direct APT transmissions of weather satellites. People who monitor and support the national power grid, Ham radio operators, airline pilots, astronomers, and satellite operations centers are acutely aware of how solar flares can affect their work.

There is also a small community of aurora junkies, who make every effort to observe study and photograph auroral activity. If you live near the poles, then auroral activity is a common sight. Those of us who live at lower latitudes will rarely, if ever, see an auroral display. During October and November 2000, a particularly auroral active time, I was fortunate to see for myself the nebulous red glow from an aurora in Connecticut. People as far south as Florida were reported to have seen the luminescent auroral glow.

Each of the large number of commercial, military and international satellites are multi-million dollar investments that need to be protected during strong solar flares and any resulting coronal mass ejections (CME). Solar weather can have very minor to disastrous effects on orbiting satellites. Some of the satellites that have experienced problems due to solar events include:

This list does not include the many scientific satellites that are temporarily shut down during major solar events for their own protection.

2) X-ray irradiance magnitude measured at the earth in the 0.1 to 0.8 nm wavelength band.

The hydrogen-alpha [H-a ] images of the Sun that SOHO provides, allow one to study the Sun's chromosphere. The chromosphere can only be observed using a very narrow band of light in the red spectrum at at 656.3 nm. The H-alpha band allows one to see solar flares as well as solar prominences and other interesting solar phenomena.

The H-alpha classification addresses flare “size” or “importance” by rating the area of angular coverage of the event at maximum brightness:

The smallest and dimmest flare would be classified as SF, with the largest and brightest flare as 4B.

In addition to the optical H-alpha classification, there is also an X-ray classification.

Researchers who study solar flares created a logarithmic ranking system for solar flare strength. Solar flare classification is done according to the order of magnitude of the X-ray irradiance measured at the Earth in the 0.1 to 0.8 nm wavelength band:

• B – Weak, Small events that have few noticeable consequences on Earth (10^-7 Wm^-2).

• C – Moderately Weak, Small events that have few noticeable consequences on Earth (<10^-6 Wm^-2).

• M – Moderate, Medium events that can cause brief radio blackouts, possible minor radiation storms (<10^-5 Wm^-2).

• X – Strong, Large events that can cause planet wide radio blackouts and power outages, long lasting radiation storms (<10^-4 Wm^-2).

A multiplier is used to further classify the strength of the solar flare within each classification. As an example, an M5 solar flare would be equal to 5 x 10^-5 Wm^-2.

The largest flare on record occurred on November 4, 2003, and was first classified as an X28. During the observation, the X-ray detectors were soon overloaded, and an estimation of the flare's intensity was later changed to X40. In actuality it can be anywhere between an X34 to X48. In March of 1989, a solar flare classified as an X15 caused a blackout for millions of Canadians. Perhaps you noticed the 23 September 2005 issue of SAS's The Citizen Scientist entitled “ The Restless Sun ” written by SAS's own Forrest M. Mims III. In this column, Forrest shows an image of the Sun producing a massive CME (Coronal Mass Ejection). The image was taken from the SOHO satellite.

The SOHO satellite is operated by a joint NASA and ESA collaboration, and is part of their SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory. This satellite is capable of making many different measurements and observations of the Sun and the solar wind (Figs 1 and 2). The SOHO project objective was to determine the following three fundamental scientific questions about the Sun:

2) Why does the solar corona exist and how is it heated to the extremely high temperature of about 1,000,000°C?

For those who want more information about the SOHO satellite's on-board instruments, go to http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/mission/SOHO_Fact_Sheet.pdf , where a PDF is available for download. If you are interested in studying space weather in a very convenient way, then you will certainly be interested in the SWIM (Space Weather Information Monitor) program from the Solar Terrestrial Dispatch.

Below is a list of some of the main features of the SWIM program from the Space Weather website:

Monitor, display, animate or print to your printer over 200 default space-weather related Internet resources, in real-time.
Use SWIM to expand and manage THOUSANDS of additional internet resources quickly and easily.
Simply cut and paste Internet URLs of resources you find interesting and SWIM will immediately begin managing those resources for you.
Configure each resource independently.

Specify how often each resource should be refreshed from the Internet.
Specify how much disk space each resource should be allowed to consume.
Indicate what conditions should exist for SWIM to dynamically change refresh rates or disk storage sizes - without human intervention.

Create and save your own image layouts. E-mail and share your own layout creations with others.
Retrieve the latest space weather forecasts and summary reports. Add any number of other textual reports you find on the Internet.
There is no limit to how large (or small) an image may be that is retrieved from the Internet. SWIM will dynamically resize itself to the image.
Plot and archive a large assortment of real-time space weather data:

Solar x-rays (1 to 8 Angstrom and 0.5 to 4.0 Angstrom bands) from the GOES-10 and GOES-12 spacecraft.
GOES-11 and GOES-12 Energetic Protons at >1, >5, >10, >30, >50 and >100 MeV.
>0.6 and >2.0 MeV electrons from GOES-12, as well as 24-hour electron fluence levels.
Thule , Greenland Neutron Monitor data.
Magnetometer data from GOES-10 and GOES-12 (all orthogonal components).
Solar wind velocity.
Solar wind density.
Solar wind temperature.
Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) magnitude (Bx, By, Bz and Bt).
IMF Theta and Phi angles.
Differential electron flux from the ACE spacecraft (2 energy channels).
Differential proton flux from the ACE spacecraft (5 energy channels).
Integral proton flux from the ACE spacecraft (>10 and >30 MeV).
Predicted magnetospheric RAM pressure from the solar wind.
Predicted magnetospheric polar cap potential.
Transit time for the solar wind to reach the Earth from the ACE spacecraft.
Orbital Distance of the ACE spacecraft from the Earth.

SWIM includes interactive and dynamic user controls for viewing all plotted data, including:

Zoom controls - zoom in on any area of any data plot.
Pan controls - pan around a plot while zoomed in.
Change the colors of plot lines, grid lines, chart backgrounds, foregrounds, gradients, etc. to suit your individual taste.
Load any number of days of data and plot together on one chart. Then zoom in on areas of interest.
Navigate to any date.
Optional master database (>1 gigabyte of data) may be purchased and used in SWIM to provide a contiguous database of almost all plots from late 1996 to the present.
Print any plotted chart to your printer - in full color.

SWIM provides free and unlimited access to our full digital SMS warning service using a built-in SMS interface control panel.

Receive solar flare alerts, interplanetary shock detection alerts, geomagnetic activity index (observed Kp and predicted Kp) alerts, auroral activity sighting notifications, IMF alerts, proton and electron density alerts, solar radio sweep and tenflare event alerts, and/or space weather summary statistics information. This is the most comprehensive and user-customizable service available. And it's all freely available to owners of SWIM. Your computer does not need to be turned on for these SMS services to be received if you have an SMS capable cellular phone or pager that can receive Internet e-mail.

Track near real-time geomagnetic A and K indices from a global network of magnetic observatories.
Receive near real-time auroral activity sighting reports from the Global Auroral Activity Observation Network.
Submit your own sighting reports to the Network using SWIM.
SWIM includes an interface to participate (if desired) in a discussion forum dedicated to solar and auroral activity and populated by amateurs and professionals around the world.
All Internet data is retrieved using background tasks.
SWIM supports the simultaneous retrieval of up to 10 Internet images at a time for maximal throughput on fast Internet connections. Each user can adjust this limit to suit his or her own needs. Users on dial-up connections may prefer lower settings while users on fast connections may prefer higher settings.
SWIM includes a printable 79-page color user's manual in Adobe Acrobat Reader format.

In addition to monitoring space weather, you can also monitor seismic events on Earth as well as volcanic activity (Fig. 3).

There are options to enable periodic updates from live webcams around the world. Would you like to see what the weather is like throughout the world at any instant in time? Maybe you have a favorite vacation spot, perhaps the Hawaiian islands? You can program the SWIM software to automatically update over 200 parameters of interest.

Ham radio operators will be especially interested in understanding more about atmospheric conditions to better determine when conditions are favorable for different communication bands (Fig. 4).

If you are interested in studying and monitoring hurricanes, typhoons, tainos, cordonazos, baguios, and willy-willies, then you will be well pleased with the amount of resources. In addition to the tremendous amount of weather data, there is also a link to sea surface temperature information and polar ice concentration (Fig. 5).

Figure 5. Hurricane Information from NOAA/GOES utilizing the IR spectrum in the Atlantic.

It can be particularly fascinating to run an animation of several hours, days, weeks, or months of weather data, or even solar activity within a few seconds. I have found it quite interesting to view the production and growth of solar flares as an animation of several seconds. Another fascinating aspect is observing near real-time seismic data (Fig. 6). Who can forget the tsunami last Christmas in Indonesia? I, as well as many other SWIM users, was able to see the seismograph within minutes of the earthquake.

In addition to the plethora of valuable research data, the SWIM software will allow the user to view a “Picture of the Day” from several organizations. Some of these images are quite striking! If you are an employee of a power company, solar astronomer, or you work with satellites, then SWIM can inform you of any impending events through the use of a digital SMS messaging service. If you have an SMS capable cell phone or pager, then SWIM can provide information ranging from X-ray solar flare activity, to newly reported auroral activity sightings – in real time!

SWIM contains a wealth of plotting capabilities for viewing archived solar data (Fig. 7). The data can be viewed over several hours, several days, or several months.

Bear in mind that your internet connection speed will directly affect your appreciation of the program. If you have dial-up, then you may not want to use the full palate of some 200+ available resources. The download times will be painfully slow, and your discouragement will increase quickly. Those with broadband will have no troubles whatsoever.

Even if you have a broadband connection, there is still an appropriate etiquette that should be observed. The remote servers accessed by SWIM have limited capacity, and if someone decides that they want to refresh their program every 5 minutes, bandwidth problems will arise. It is advised that common sense and courtesy be observed – if a particular website only provides data every 2 hours, then it makes absolutely no sense to ask for that data every 5 minutes. If too many people ask for data refreshes too often, then the administrators will have no recourse but to restrict the offenders.

The cost of the SWIM software is currently at $150, a bit expensive for some. But fear not, they have a cheaper version for half that price. The cheaper version ( STD Aurora Monitor ) does not have all the capabilities that the professional SWIM software does, but it is certainly adequate for doing valuable research. The people who offer these programs offer a free limited version of the STD Aurora Monitor for evaluation.

Bear in mind that most of the images and data can be accessed with your web browser. However, you cannot conveniently and easily store and compile the data, and you will have to expend some effort to produce animations of saved data. It can be very interesting to animate the growth of a tropical depression into a tropical storm, and finally into a full fledged hurricane or typhoon. This slow process (from several days to a week) can be animated into several seconds of animation. Additionally, the Solar Terrestrial Dispatch has extensive libraries of archived data related to the solar wind. This archived data extends back to January 1997.