The instructions below will allow you to get data from Polar, TIMED (Thermosphere*Ionosphere*Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics), and IMAGE (Imager for Magnetosphere-to-Aurora; Global Exploration)satellites from previous days and years. When you are comfortable with the instructions you can get Polar, TIMED, and IMAGE data by clicking on the links below.

Polar VIS
TIMED GUVI
IMAGE
IMAGE Far-UltraViolet (FUV) imager archive page

More Polar VIS Images

By clicking on Polar VIS at the top of this page you will be able to access VIS images directly from the Polar VIS site. This will allow you access to archives of images for more in-depth research. When you click on the Polar VIS link, you will see the following page.

This shows the same Current Image that is displayed on the SON Space Weather Alert System page. The left menu bar of this page provides a wealth of additional images. The top 7 buttons will be especially useful. The seventh button, Previous Images, provides an archive of images from 1996. When you pick the year of interest (for example 2003), the next page groups the images by Day Of the Year (DOY)

For example, 001_007 will provide the images from Jan. 1 to Jan. 7, and 092_098 provides images from April 2 to April 8. Let's see what part of the page for 092_098 looks like.

This will take some explanation. Don't rely on the dates printed on the right! The correct dates for the images are imbedded in the file name. Examine the second file name as an example; 30920711_MAP.GIF - the first number (3) means the year (2003), the next three numbers (092) gives the day of the year as the 92nd day (April 2), the next four numbers (0711) tells the time of day in Universal Time. The MAP tells you there is a map of the globe superimposed on the image.

Now imagine that you wanted to see if there was a strong aurora that extended into the northern United States on April 2, 2003. Go to the VIS site and get the image for April 2, 2003 at 7:11 UT. Look at the image closely and then close the window and return to this page. You should see the image below.

Is this a nighttime or daytime view? What part of the Earth is featured? (hint: the South Pole is on top) Click on the image to get answers to these questions.

Notice that the image you just retrieved will not tell you about auroras at night over the United States. The VIS images are several minutes apart and the Polar space craft orbits the Earth once every 17 hours. The image you looked at was at 7:11 UT. You wouldn't expect the satellite to have images of North America for several hours. In fact, there are no images between 9:48 UT (30920948) and 19:25 UT (30921925). By 19:25UT the satellite is observing the South Pole and Antarctica. There won't always be missing data. However, the 17-hour orbit could mean that Polar wasn't observing North America for 8 or more hours that are very important to you. Another satellite, TIMED, can be used to provide images of auroras that Polar might not be able to.

TIMED GUVI (Global Ultraviolet Imager) Images

Polar provides images of an entire hemisphere of the Earth, but it takes 17 hours to complete an orbit. The TIMED satellite takes only 97 minutes to orbit the Earth. The GUVI camera on TIMED takes images that show the intensity of ultraviolet light coming from the upper atmosphere - but only in a narrow swath. The following movie constructed from the GUVI instrument shows intense auroras occurring over the northern and southern polar regions during solar storms in April 2002, with auroras extending into much lower latitudes than usual. Several data tracks, acquired during multiple spacecraft passes, are superimposed over an Earth image to show the location of the auroras. In this video, the Earth image transitions into two to show the location of the aurora over both poles simultaneously. The northern polar region is shown on the left and the southern on the right.

When you click on the TIMED GUVI link above, you will get to a page called GUVI Gallery. You want the Level 1B Survey Product Gallery. Click on that. You will see a page similar to the image below.

A few settings must be checked or changed. Look along the top of the image.

The Day menu will start with the most current date with data available when you open the window. In the image above the Day is set to the 236th day of 2003. Choose the day you wish to investigate. You can go back to Jan. 7, 2002. It takes several days for the GUVI scientists to prepare the images, so you wonÕt see the image from the current day.

The ORBIT# starts with the first orbit of the day chosen.

DATA VIEWS offers a choice of polar or equatorial views. You will want to experiment with these choices, but generally you will want the polar image.

WAVELENGTHS offers choices of ultraviolet wavelengths. For your observations it is suggested that you set this to LBH1.

After you have adjusted the settings, click on RETRIEVE IMAGE.

This image shows the swath of data taken during the 9,248th orbit on the 236th day (Aug 24) of 2003. The image is looking down from above the North Pole with North America to the left. The text to the upper right says the orbit started August 23 at 22:25:38 UT and ended 2 minutes and 47 seconds into August 24. This swath goes over eastern United States, so we would subtract 6 hours to get the time of the data on the East Coast. So this image shows eastern US between 1600 and 1800 hours (4:00pm to 6:00pm). The blue color over eastern Russia (low UV light) is because it is night. Most of the yellow and greenish over the Atlantic and the eastern US is due to sunlight. The red and yellow (bright UV light) forms a partial circle over the Artic and is due to an aurora.

When you click on NEXT ORBIT you can see the swath an hour and a half later. Several orbits later the following image was constructed.

This image shows that it is night over western US, Canada and Alaska. How can you tell? A strong aurora (red and orange) is visible over northern Alaska, the Artic and Russia. The green that extends southward in Russia and China shows that the Sun is shining on that side.

IMAGE Satellite
IMAGE Far-UltraViolet (FUV) imager archive page

The Imager for Magnetosphere-to-Aurora; Global Exploration (IMAGE) watches the belts of high-energy particles orbiting Earth, and the polar regions for signs of energy input into the Earth space environment. This second data set shows how bright the polar auroral oval is in real time. The images are updated every 5 minutes. In the pictures from the satellite, the Earth changes its size and orientation as the spacecraft orbits once every 13.5 hours. It is closest to the South Pole and you get a huge zoom-in on the aurora over Antarctica that fills the screen. Then the satellite moves to position high above the North Pole and you see a far-away picture of Earth's disk that is smaller than the image box. The image below shows an equatorial view with the North Pole to the left and an aurora is visible over the South Pole to the right. This view shows night over the Pacific and Asia, Indonesia and Australia.

When you enter the IMAGE Far-UltraViolet (FUV) page you will see this.

You can play the film loop of current observations by clicking the animate button.

To retrieve data from earlier times, visit the IMAGE Far-UltraViolet (FUV) imager archive page by clicking on the botton above.

Click on the left-hand link that says 'overview plots'. This will open up a page titled 'Index of /image/wic_summary'

The auroral oval images are in folders identified by the year and month. For example, 2000_05/ means all the data available for May 2000. The current plots are located in the folder for the current year and month. Example 2003_01/ is the January 2003 data. If you open this folder you will see the following list:

Click on the first link 'wic 2003 10 00.gif' to open the following image:

Click on the third link to open wic 2003 11 00.gif

The top of each panel gives the Day-of-Year (in this case '11') and the date (Jan 11). Each image tile is numbered by its Universal Time. You will note that there are discontinuities in the time because the data is not taken unless the satellite is viewing the polar regions. Data while the satellite is leaving these regions and passing over the equator are not provided in these archive images, but you can see this motion in the real-time images if you are curious. It is easy to pick out the times when the satellite was over Antarctica because the auroral oval fills the entire window since the satellite is only 1000 kilometers above the ground and nearly passing through the auroral altitudes! When the satellite is over the Arctic, we see a nice round image of Earth in the window and can often make out the auroral oval.

To quantify what you are seeing over the Arctic, here is a series of auroral images that are typical of what you may see over the North Pole region.