In general terms, the most basic unit of information that the archive distributes is a data file, which we also call an observation.
Observations sometimes are grouped into studies. The definition of a study is somewhat loose: It's a collection of observations (or data files) that were taken by the same instrument.
Observations can also be grouped into campaigns. The difference between campaign and studies is that, while studies are defined by an instrument team, observations are coordinated among several instrument teams with the possible participation of other observatories, both ground and space based. Campaigns are well defined and have an unique number identifying them.
For example, selecting CDS and CELIAS in the instrument list and a date range will produce a query that will match observations taken by CDS or CELIAS and with dates within the specified range.
Scrolling lists
String matching rules
If the end date/time is not entered, it will be set to start date and time plus 24 hours. If the month and date are ambiguous (10/9 can be either Oct 9 or Sep 10), it assumes Month/Day.
The time (HH:MM:SS) is optional and will be set to 00:00:00 if not supplied. Acceptable formats include:
Scrolling lists allow multiple selections. How to select multiple entries depends on the browser being used and on the underlying operative system. For example, Netscape running on Unix lets you click on multiple entries directly. Netscape running on Windows 9x requires you to hold the Control key down to achieve the same effect. Try holding the Control, Shift or Meta keys while clicking with your mouse to see how your browser behaves.
Strings will be matched at the beginning, middle or end of the field, and are case insensitive. For example, 'Doppler' will match 'Dopplergram', 'This is a Dopplergram', and 'dopplergram'. White spaces are acceptable. Please, do not use quotes of any kind. No regexps either.
Clicking on the box at the beginning of each row selects the item for retrieval. The button labeled 'Retrieve Selected' will submit a data request for all the items selected. Use the other button, labeled 'Retrieve All' for requesting all items currently listed in the table.
To obtain additional information about a particular item, click on the question mark in the second cell of the row.
It also requests two pieces of information from the user: An e-mail address where the user can be contacted when the data are ready for download, and the format it should use to pack the data together.
Here is how a data request works:
Expect a delay of about 20 minutes between the time of a data request placement and the e-mail notification for actual retrieval.
We recommend using the interface with Netscape version 6.1 or above.
This help file has not been modified since September 14, 2007 August 8, 2001.