The SDC is the central processing and analysis facility for the EPIC particle instrument, one of seven instruments in the GEOTAIL mission. GEOTAIL is the first mission to make extensive observations in the distant tail beyond the lunar orbit and in the neutral sheet of the near-earth tail region. GEOTAIL also has many orbital sections which run parallel to the magnetopause or bow shock. The GEOTAIL deep tail phase ran from September 1992 to November 1994, followed by a transition to a near-Earth phase, with an initial orbit of 10x30 Re that in June 1997 was slightly reduced to 9x30 Re, which is its final orbit.
Data Access: |
Digital data for years 1992 through the present are
available over the web. There are two distinct ways to access the digital data, and both methods give access to the highest time resolution Geotail/EPIC data. |
| 1. The first method allows a simple download of ASCII files. | |
| With this method, simply fill out a web-based form and then you can click on links to calibrated, ASCII data files. | |
| 2. The second method allows you to run custom software to plot and/or download data. | |
| With this method, you can launch a Java program over the web which allows you to create (and save) custom plots. Digital data is also available through the tool, which is called MIDL.
This method has a steeper learning curve, but allows sophisticated plotting, such as pitch angle plots, color spectrograms, and "movies" of particle spectra. |
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| NOTE: | Regardless of how you access the online digital data, please familiarize yourself with the instrument first by reading some of the instrument description pages. You will also want to be familiar with the list of particle channels available in the EPIC dataset. |