ISEE 3 Field and Plasma Data at NSSDC

By Natalia Papitashvili, Joe King, Kent Hills

In the last issue we reported the availability from NSSDC, via simple ftp and via FTPBrowser, of 1982-1985 0.167-second resolution magnetic field data from the ISEE 3 spacecraft. In this issue we report the full range of ISEE 3 plasma and field data electronically accessible from NSSDC, including two new data sets created at NSSDC for extra user convenience.

For several years, the following data sets were available from the now-retired NDADS/SPyCAT system and are now available at nssdcftp:

A mixed resolution (minute, hour, day) IMF data set spanning 1978-1990;
Electron-based plasma moments at 168-s resolution for 1980-1992;
Electron-based plasma moments at hourly resolution for 1978-1992.

In recent times, the following data sets were made ftp-accessible from nssdcftp (in addition to the 0.167-s IMF data discussed last time):

Electron temperature data at 168-s resolution for 1978-1980;
Proton-based plasma parameters at 24-s resolution for 1978-1980.

This latter 24-s proton-based data set also has an FTPBrowser interface for graphical display and subsetting by parameters and by time.

In part motivated by taking a new approach to adding ISEE 3 data to OMNI 2 (a successor to the popular multi-source 1963-2001 OMNI compilation of solar wind and related data), two new data sets were recently created at NSSDC. First, the one-minute data were extracted from the mixed-resolution IMF data set for 1978-1982, yielding a more easily used data set. This data set is ftp-accessible from nssdcftp.

Second, a two-minute-resolution merged IMF and plasma data set was created from several sources. These are the 1-min IMF data set discussed in the previous paragraph, the 24-s proton-based plasma data set referenced above, an offline 5-min-resolution flow latitude data set (flow latitudes are not included in the 24-s data set) and daily-resolution ISEE 3 position data. It is believed that the merging of several field, plasma and position parameters into single records is potentially beneficial to many researchers. This data set also has an FTPBrowser interface for graphical display, etc.

The data of this 2-minute data set will be "time shifted" to Earth, with hour averages computed from the shifted data for adding to OMNI 2.

The FTPBrowser interfaces for the three relevant ISEE 3 data sets are available from http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftphelper/

The address for simple ftp accessibility of the 9 relevant ISEE 3 data sets is ftp://nssdcftp.gsfc.nasa.gov/spacecraft_data/isee/isee3/. Note that this address also provides access to ISEE 3 cosmic ray data.

ISEE 1 plasma data are available from ftp://nssdcftp.gsfc.nasa.gov/spacecraft_data/isee/isee1/