Solar OpenMonitor. lab ALPHA

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About · methodology · citations · RSTN guide

Layout

One integrated Plotly figure with two subplots sharing a single time axis — any zoom or pan moves both subplots in lockstep. Top: GOES SXR (left axis) + RSTN microwave (right axis) — the always-on continuous monitors. Bottom: RHESSI HXR (left axis) + POEMAS mm-wave (right axis) — event-day archives with sparser coverage. Coverage drawers in the toolbar give day-level archive availability and joint-coverage flagging.

Top subplot — GOES soft X-ray (left axis, W m⁻²)

XRS A (blue, 0.05–0.4 nm) · XRS B (red, 0.1–0.8 nm). G-08→G-15 rescaled ×0.85 A, ×0.70 B; G-16/G-18 native. Yellow dots = NOAA SWPC flare peaks (1975 → present).

Top subplot — RSTN microwave (right axis, log SFU)

10-s medians at 245, 410, 610, 1415, 2695, 4995, 8800, 15400 MHz. Color = frequency; lines are always solid for readability. The 4 stations are typically used one at a time (selected by checkbox) — each station only sees the Sun in its local-daylight UT window, so there is rarely a reason to enable two stations simultaneously. If you do, traces of the same frequency will overlap. Coverage 2009-12 → 2016-12.

Bottom subplot — RHESSI hard X-ray (left axis, log counts/s)

12-s bins, currently summed over all 18 detector segments (9 front + 9 rear). 6 energy bands from 3 keV to 300 keV. Coverage 2010-01 → 2016-04, 924 specific days (subset of the upstream archive — 46 all-zero days were dropped after first-pass curation showed RHESSI was in safe / passive mode).

Pre-alpha caveat: the standard SSWIDL framework (Schwartz et al. 2002, Table II) provides an observing-summary flag object (hsi_obs_summ_flag) that SSW analysis routines use to mask off-Sun and other bad-time intervals. That filtering is not yet applied here because the flag arrays are not statically published alongside the daily hsi_fullrate_*.fits files we mirror from hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/hessidata (NASA GSFC's RHESSI archive); the flag object lives in companion observing-summary products that SSWIDL generates on demand. Per Smith et al. 2002 §4.3, the three dominant non-solar contributors to the RHESSI count rate are: (a) South-Atlantic-Anomaly passes — several per day on successive orbits — noting that during SAA proper, photon events are turned off (Smith §3.1), so SAA appears as data gaps, not spikes; (b) electron-precipitation events at high geomagnetic latitudes (~40–50°), which can raise the background by more than an order of magnitude and look like rapid spikes — distinguishable because they appear more strongly in rear segments than in front segments (Smith §4.3); (c) smooth cosmic-ray modulation tracking geomagnetic latitude over each orbit. Treat the lab RHESSI panel as exploratory until SSWIDL-cleaned bundles are in place.

Bottom subplot — POEMAS 45/90 GHz mm-wave (right axis, linear SFU)

L1.5 detrended flux residuals at 45 GHz (orange) and 90 GHz (blue), 10-s cadence. CASLEO observatory, Argentina; daytime-only operation (~9–18 UT). Coverage: 946 specific days from 2011-11 → 2024-10. The axis is linear (not log) because the detrended residuals can be negative. Quiet sun ≈ 0 SFU; bursts up to thousands of SFU.

Methodology: rolling-median detrending (60-min window) of the Stokes-I antenna temperature, after masking ELE < 10°. Validated against Valio et al. 2013 M7.9 of 2012-03-13 (recovered 956 SFU @ 45 GHz vs 1040 ± 50 published; 92% recovery within 1σ). The Joint M+ events drawer cross-references the MANIFEST first/last UT to flag flares as "★" only when POEMAS was actually observing the peak (CASLEO is daytime-only, so a "POEMAS day" with peak at 22 UT was NOT observed).

Coverage drawers (toolbar)

• 📅 RHESSI coverage: calendar of 924 RHESSI-archived days.
• 📅 POEMAS coverage: calendar of 946 POEMAS-archived days.
• 📅 Joint coverage: calendar coloured 1..4 by # of instruments active that day; gold ★ = all four.
• 🌟 Joint M+ events: sortable list of NOAA M and X flares whose peak time falls inside POEMAS's actual observed window — gated by MANIFEST first/last UT, not just the day being POEMAS-listed.

Legend behaviour

Single click toggles a trace, double click solos it. Or use Show all RSTN / Hide RSTN / Show all RHESSI / Hide RHESSI / Show POEMAS / Hide POEMAS in the toolbar row 2.

For deeper analysis

This is a quick first stop — for spectra, images, orbit-by-orbit RHESSI products, or full multi-mission diagnostics, see the Berkeley RHESSI Browser (Albert Y. Shih) and Helioviewer (AIA / LASCO imagery). The Helioviewer ↗ link in the toolbar opens Helioviewer at the midpoint of the current window; the SolarMonitor ↗ link opens SolarMonitor for the start UTC date (full-disk + active region table for that day).

How to cite (optional)

This is an exploratory viewer for browsing multi-instrument flare events — undergraduate-friendly, pre-paper. You are not obligated to cite it. If it helped you find or pre-screen an event that ended up in a paper, talk, or thesis, a citation is appreciated but never required:

@misc{romero2026solaropenmonitor,
  author       = {Romero, Mauricio},
  title        = {Solar OpenMonitor: an interactive multi-wavelength
                  solar flare viewer (GOES + RSTN + RHESSI + POEMAS)},
  year         = {2026},
  url          = {https://solar.openmonitor.org},
  note         = {Lab build at /lab/. DOI pending (Zenodo).}
}

📋 Copy BibTeX Pending Zenodo DOI registration; once registered the citation will include a versioned DOI per release.

Underlying data — always cite the original sources

If you publish a figure or analysis derived from any panel, the citation that does matter is the one for the underlying instrument / dataset. The viewer just renders public data; the science credit belongs to the missions and curators below:

• GOES XRS — NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-x-ray-flux. Cross-calibration ×0.85 A / ×0.70 B for G-08 to G-15 follows the documented SWPC legacy-scale convention.
• NOAA flare catalog — NOAA SWPC event list, mirrored via HESPERIA (live) plus historical 1975→2025 archive (~95 k events).
• RSTN — NOAA NCEI / USAF Radio Solar Telescope Network. NGDC RSTN documentation. License: U.S. Government work / public domain.
• RHESSI — Lin et al. 2002 (mission, 10.1023/A:1022428818870); Smith et al. 2002 (spectrometer, 10.1023/A:1022400716414); Hurford et al. 2002 (imaging, 10.1023/A:1022436213688); Schwartz et al. 2002 (analysis software, 10.1023/A:1022444531435).
• POEMAS — Valio et al. 2013 (instrument and flux conversion 10.1086/674313); Lessa et al. 2023 (detrending methodology, A&C). Public archive at www.macksun.org.

Contributing a dataset

Have curated data at a wavelength not yet shown here (radio, EUV, gamma, particles, in-situ, ground-based magnetograms, etc.) and want it integrated into the viewer? The project is open to additional panels as long as the data is publicly distributable and there is a stable URL or static archive to pull from.

Email romero@rudimirz.com with: instrument name, wavelength / energy range, cadence, coverage window, file format, and where it lives. Contributors are credited in the Acknowledgments section of the About panel and in any associated paper or Zenodo release.

RSTN station guide — which station should I check?

RSTN is a 4-site network designed so the Sun is always above the horizon at at least one station. Each site only records during local daylight, so the right station depends on the UT hour of your event. Rule of thumb: full-power window ≈ ±4 h around local noon, marginal coverage ±6 h.

Station	Longitude	Local noon (UT)	Best UT window
Learmonth (Australia)	114° E	~04:30	00–09 UT
San Vito (Italy)	18° E	~10:50	06–16 UT
Sagamore Hill (USA)	71° W	~16:45	12–22 UT
Palehua (Hawaii)	158° W	~22:30	17 UT–03 UT

Together the four sites give roughly 24-hour coverage with overlap zones (~3 h) where two stations see the same flare. POEMAS (CASLEO, Argentina, 70° W) overlaps strongly with Sagamore Hill in UT.