Quicklook Spectrum Plots

These are electron spectrum plots made from every quarter orbit during which REPTile-2 took measurements. There are several components to these plots, two of which are shown below. The title at the top of the plot is the date and time in UTC that the data in the plot was collected. Below that there is a map showing CIRBE’s path during the time period. The path is color coded into blue, green, red, and black according to what region it is in. Blue corresponds to the trapped region, green corresponds to the quasi-trapped region (drift loss cone), red corresponds to the untrapped region (bounce loss cone), and black corresponds to the region where the McIlwain L-parameter (L) >10.

Below the map, there is the electron spectrum plot. On the top of the plot there are a series of points in the aforementioned colors of blue, green, red, and black. Each point represents a datapoint, and its color shows what region CIRBE was in when that datapoint was taken. Below these points there is a black line. If the line is solid (figure on the left), the integration period for each datapoint is one second. If the line is dashed (figure on the right), the integration period for each datapoint is five seconds. Below the black line, the electron flux spectrum is displayed across 1<L<9. The X-axis is the L and the Y-axis is the electron energy, while the colors show the electron flux according to the colorbar on the right as calculated via the bowtie method.

Each spectrum plot is named “Ek_L_yyyy_MM_dd_hhmmss”, where ‘yyyy’ is the year, ‘MM’ is the month, ‘dd’ is the day, and ‘hhmmss’ is the time of day (in UTC) of the first datapoint displayed in the plot. For example, the plot shown above on the left is named ‘Ek_L_2023_04_21_144737.png’.

The plots are organized into folders for each day and can be viewed or downloaded via the links below. These are only meant to be used as a quick overview of the data and are not to be used for any publications.

Notes:

  • We acknowledge the use of the IRBEM library (4.4.0), the latest version of which can be found at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6867552.
  • The data used to create these plots is unprocessed and has not undergone the quality control and refinement processes that were used to create the official data products. Factors such as data collection gaps, data errors, spacecraft operation mode, and plotting errors may cause features to appear in the plots that are not representative of reality. If something is unclear or if you plan to do any in-depth research using CIRBE data, please use the official data products. If there are any conflicts between what can be seen on these plots and the official data products, the official data products are to be considered valid. These plots are only meant to be used as a quick overview and are not meant for publication or in-depth research.

Questions or concerns?

CIRBE

Colorado Inner Radiation Belt Experiment

Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics
© Regents of the University of Colorado
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