Solar2000

Solar2000

(21 February 2004) Solar2000 provides variable solar irradiances and integrated irradiance proxies from the X-rays to visible wavelengths for historical, nowcast, and forecast time frames. Users are researchers who want solar energy input for their models and professionals who require operational solar energies for space and ground systems.

Space Environment Technologies has now released SOLAR2000 (S2K) v2.23, both in the Research Grade (RG) and Professional Grade (PG) models. There are several new features in both models that may be useful.

Research Grade:

S2KRG for historical 1 AU adjusted or observed irradiances and proxies now runs on any platform, with or without an IDL license.
For licensed IDL user, S2KRG v2.23 is provided in IDL 5.6 or 6.0 formats. For users without an IDL license, free use of Solar2000 is now possible without an IDL license for any operating system. Solar2000 is developed in IDL and Space Environment Technologies has worked with Research Systems Inc (RSI) over the past several months to be able to provide the S2K application utilising the newly developed IDL 6.0 Virtual Machine (VM). Now, with a one line command in an X-terminal window on your computer, you can run Solar2000.
S2KRG v2.23 uses the same derivation datasets as v2.22 but includes updated irradiances and integrated irradiance proxies through December 31, 2003.

Professional Grade:

S2KPG for historical, nowcast, and forecast observed irradiances and proxies now runs on any platform, also with or without an IDL license. S2KPG has been designed for operational users who require up-to-the-minute current and forecast information of the Sun's irradiances to determine their effects upon ground- and space-based systems.
This is the first version of the model created to use the IDL 6.0 virtual machine. Any machine, with or without and IDL license, can now run Solar2000 PG. IDL licensed users still have full support as well.
Other features in v2.23 include renaming the "model sets" button options from: Model A to S2K+ASTM490; Model B to S2K+VUV2002; and Model C to VUV2002. An "Open File" button option in the GUI allows the user to open any file on the hard disk or in a local area network. This function works for ASCII and PDF files, the latter opened by Adobe Acrobat Reader on the user's machine. This is also the first version of the Professional Grade model to use a formal license.

Upgrades In Progress:

There are several long-term research activities in progress to improve the quality of the forecasts, the physics content of the model, the time resolution, and the spectral resolution of Solar2000. A few upgrades that are planned for releases over the first half of 2004 are as follows:

Several excellent reference spectra have become available from the Atlas 1 and 3 missions (SOLSPEC instrument) and from a NREL-related composite spectrum. Currently, Solar2000 uses the ASTM E490 reference spectrum and, while it is intended to retain that spectrum as an option, the new spectra will be included as user-available options to represent irradiances that are not yet variable, especially in the visible and infrared regions.

The TIMED (SEE) and SORCE (XPS, SIM, TIM) spacecraft instruments have provided a wealth of spectral, time-resolved data and Space Environment Technologies is working with those science teams to incorporate these new datasets as they complete their calibration activities.

For the Professional Grade model users, options will soon be provided to report irradiances convolved with user-defined instrument slit functions and irradiances integrated over definable wavelength bandpasses.

(source: Space Environment Technologies)