SPEDAS
SPEDAS (Space Physics Environment Data Analysis System) is an open-source data analysis tool intended for space physics users. It was developed using Interactive Data Language (IDL). Since its creation, the tool has also been ported to Python in the form of a program referred to as pySPEDAS.
01Overview
SPEDAS is free software that can download and manipulate data from scientific space missions. It contains both a GUI (graphical user interface) and a command line mode for advanced users. It offers various tools for performing calculations and transformations of the data and for visualizing the results. Software modules can be developed for SPEDAS, extending its capabilities. It also includes a tool for downloading data from NASA servers using CDAWeb.
SPEDAS evolved from software developed for the THEMIS mission, which was called TDAS (THEMIS Data Analysis Software). In turn, TDAS used IDL code developed previously for earlier missions going back to the 1990s.
SPEDAS was developed by scientists and programmers of the University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Los Angeles's IGPP Archived 1 September 2014 at the Wayback Machine and other contributors.
02Deployment
Three different types of SPEDAS deployment are available:
- Source code. The full IDL code for SPEDAS is available as a zip file download. To use this, users must install and license IDL from Exelis.
- Save file. IDL save files can run in a free but restricted version of IDL, called IDL Virtual Machine (VM). Users have to download IDL VM from Exelis, install it and register with Exelis before they can use the SPEDAS save file.
- Executable file. This distribution contains executable files for Windows, Linux and Mac OS. In this case, users do not have to separately install and download anything else.
03Plugins
One of the main goals of SPEDAS is to accommodate the needs of different NASA missions. Towards this goal, its architecture is modular. Users can develop plugins for loading data, for configuration and for specialized calculations or operations on the data.
As of version 3.1, SPEDAS includes plugins for loading data from the following missions or data sets:
Plugins for specialized calculations are:
- Generation of GOES overview plots
- Generation of THEMIS overview plots
- THEMIS particle distribution slices
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “SPEDAS”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Spedas overview.PNG by Nikos 2004, CC BY-SA 4.0
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