Solar Soft

The SolarSoft system is a set of integrated software libraries, data bases, and system utilities which provide a common programming and data analysis environment for Solar Physics. The SolarSoftWare (SSW) system is built from Yohkoh, SOHO, SDAC and Astronomy libraries and draws upon contributions from many members of those projects. It is primarily an IDL based system, although some instrument teams integrate executables written in other languages. The SSW environment provides a consistent look and feel at widely distributed co-investigator institutions to facilitate data exchange and to stimulate coordinated analysis. Commonalities and overlap in solar data and analysis goals are exploited to permit application of fundamental utilities to the data from many different solar instruments. The use of common libraries, utilities, techniques and interfaces minimzies the learning curve for investigators who are analyzing new solar data sets, correlating results from multiple experiments or performing research away from their home institution. Some of the primary goals of the SSW are... Provide a large reuse SW library The software library represents an evolutionary system tracing back to SMM, through Yohkoh and SOHO, TRACE, and eventually will incorporate SXI, HESSI, and other solar observatories. Many common "solar physics" , file i/o, system, IDL structure manipulation, data display, etc. tasks have already been addressed by others (many others in some cases!) Very small sample of existing SSW capabilities... Time series analysis, time conversions, UTPLOT (millennium safe) Spectral fitting Image and Image cube (movies) display IDL data manipulation (structure, string, array, mathematics...) File I/O (generic binary, ascii), FITS Solar (limb fitting, grid overlay, coordinate tranformations...) WWW related (html conversion, file conversions, FORM handling, movie making,...) WWW Client<->SolarSoft IDL server interface permits execution of SSW/IDL utilities over the Web Examples include SXT dynamic WWW movie maker and WWW GOES X-Ray light curve display WWW index which allows searching for SSW routines by category and/or string pattern is available. Provide a system which is largely hardware-system and site independent Installation and setup utilities simplify tranportation to systems. Fundamental shared software is written in hardware-independent and site-configuration independent form. The SSW setup utilities support local configuration files to get sites up and running Promote the use of certain standards which facilitate coordinated data analysis Through use of suggested standards, many powerful routines are immediately available for the analysis of new data sets. The SSWsuggested Keywords and Tags descibes pointing and time standards. Application for overlay, alignment, scaling, rotation, etc of any SSW instruments via Dominic Zarro's Mapping software Promote an evolutionary environment Feedback and contributions from the many SSW institutes and users are strongly encouraged. Utilties to simplify remote SSW upgrades and accept user contribution are designed to make the system evolutionary instead of stagnant and divergent. Provide access to supporting ancillary data bases Access to supporting data sets from ground-based and satellite-based solar observatories are provided in consistent formats to facilitate coordinated analysis Provide a file-format independent analysis environment To accomodate the largest number of solar data sets, file I/O is isolated and analysis applications are designed to operate on objects which are independent of file type. Provide integrated access to other IDL packages When IDL libraries are identified which provide a useful extension to SSW capabilities, we will attempt to integrate them into the SSW system. For example, the Chianti Package, K. Dere et al. is now fully integrated into the SSW distribution and analysis environment for UV/EUV emission line analysis.

The SolarSoft system is a set of integrated software libraries, data bases, and system utilities which provide a common programming and data analysis environment for Solar Physics.