Exercise 1: Web interface

Selected Madrigal sites

Simple Local Data Access

  1. Start at the CEDAR Madrigal or Arecibo site, and choose Simple Local Data Access. We will be looking at Arecibo ISR data, and those are the only two sites that have local copies. As the name suggests, Simple Local Data Access is only for local data.

    1. Choose the Arecibo Linefeed radar. If you are using the CEDAR site, it will be easier if you choose "Incoherent Scatter Radars" as the instrument type. This option does not appear on the Arecibo site because it only has data from a few instruments.

    2. Choose 2013, then November, and then the 4th.

    3. Arecibo ran two different modes this day - what were they?

    4. Choose the MRACF file.

    5. Use the Download data to download the file in both ascii and Hdf5 format.

    6. Use the Print data to display the file in ascii format in the browser.

    7. Use the View info, Show plots, and More parameters buttons. The More parameters button is a link to the full UI that allows you to choose parameters and set filters.

Browse for Individual Madrigal Experiments

  1. Start at any Madrigal site above (CEDAR, Arecibo, or any other).

  2. Use Full Access Data and then Browse for Individual Madrigal Experiments. Search for instruments that were running on 2013-11-04. Use the default All Madrigal Sites option. Go back and repeat the search so only Incoherent Scatter Radars are shown. Choose all Incoherent Scatter Radars in the lower selection list.

  3. Select the Arecibo Linefeed experiment that was running on 2013-11-04, and do the following with that experiment:

    1. Determine how many data files there are for that experiment, and how they differ.

    2. For one of the files, choose "View description from the catalog and/or header records", and read the summary information stored there.

    3. Download the MRACF file in ascii format by using the Download file link, and sticking with the default Simple column-formated ascii option. Remember that this option does not filter the data, and no derived parameters will be included. Open the downloaded file with a text editor to make sure its easy to understand and parse.

    4. Download the Barker Code in Hdf5 format. Do not try to download it in ascii format - it would be too large.

    5. Madrigal administrators can add plots and links to each Madrigal experiment. Click on the plots from that experiment.

    6. For the default file for MRACF Basic Derived Parameters, choose "Print file as ascii (isprint)". This link allows you print both measured and derived parameters. For this file, choose time parameters (year, month, day, hour, min, sec), geographic parameters (elm, azm, gdlat, glon, gdalt), geophysical parameter (kp), and I. S. Radar Basic Parameters (ne, dne, ti, dti, te, dte). Which of these parameters are in the file, and which are derived?

    7. Repeat the above with headers off and missing data replaced with the string NaN.

    8. Save the result in a file using the Save text to file button.

    9. Determine what the Geographic coordinate parameter SDWHT means.

    10. Next, we'll try to filter the data. There are some standards filter at the top of the web page, such as elevation or altitude. Just under them are free-form filters that allow filtering using any parameter. First, apply a filter to select azimuths between 70 and 110. Look at the resulting data to be sure the correct azimuths were selected.

    11. Add a filter so that only data where te/dte is greater than 10.0 is printed (that is, the error in te is less than one-tenth the measured value).

Run Models

  1. Use the Madrigal page Run Models->Calculate any Madrigal parameter for a given time and range of lat, lon, and alt to calculate the shadow height (SDWHT) and magnetic field vector (BN,BE,BD) 1000 km directly above PFISR (lat 65.130, lon -147.471) at 2007-03-27 12:00:00 UT.

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