Data usage
These data are not of scientific quality and are provided in good faith by Imperial College London
for use only in making real-time space weather predictions.
Science quality data are provided to the public ESA Solar Orbiter Archive
three months after receipt on the ground.
Acknowledging Data Use
Production of the Solar Orbiter magnetometer in real time is a complex undertaking and is made on a best-efforts
basis. Please acknowledge Imperial College London when presenting or using these data. If you wish to
publish papers using these data, or subsequently available science-quality data covering the same times,
you must contact Imperial first and we will ask you to include a small number of MAG team co-authors.
Description of data
This is a time series plot of the latest magnetic field data (Horbury et al., 2020) measured by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft.
The top three panels show the field components (radial, tangential, normal) and the bottom is the magnitude.
For comparison with Earth, the third (N) component is similar in direction to the GSE Z (North-South) direction.
Time coverage and latency
Data are shown over the last several days.
Data are downloaded from the spacecraft during passes, which typically occur once per day for around 8 hours.
The data are transferred from ESA servers to Imperial College London where they are processed through a complex pipeline that removes many spacecraft interference signals.
At the time of writing (Feb 2025) this pipeline runs once an hour during passes, so data can be up to 2 hours out of date during passes allowing for all the various delays.
A list of upcoming passes is maintained at the Solar Orbiter magnetometer
real-time data page at
[https://www.imperial.ac.uk/space-and-atmospheric-physics/research/missions-and-projects/space-missions/solar-orbiter/updates/]
Usefulness for space weather prediction
The Solar Orbiter trajectory is complex and its relative position to the Earth and other bodies varies over
relatively short timescales, so its utility for space weather forecasting changes over time. The
current angle of the spacecraft to the Sun-Earth line, as well as its distance upstream, are
listed at [https://www.imperial.ac.uk/space-and-atmospheric-physics/research/missions-and-projects/space-missions/solar-orbiter/updates/] .
For a graphical representation of the location of the spacecraft, we recommend using
Solar-MACH: [Streamlit| https://solar-mach.streamlit.app/]
Questions?
Any questions about these data can be addressed to solarorbitermaghelp@imperial.ac.uk
References
The Solar Orbiter magnetometer, T. S. Horbury et al., A&A 642 A9 (2020), DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201937257