Site Updates
See the About page for an overview of the objectives of the SMILE Data Fusion Facility (DFF), supporting information on the data that has been uploaded to the site and for the latest issues and future updates.
This page provides a timeline of updates made to the SMILE DFF through the following stages of development: Release 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1 and 4.0.
Advisory information is indicated by red highlighted text.
Corrections made to the SMILE DFF is indicated by green highlighted text.
Release 1.0
| Timeline | Webpage | Updates | 2019/01 - 2022/12 | Home page | Uses web-address https://www403.lamp.le.ac.uk/ |
|---|---|---|
| 2019/01 - 2022/12 | Fusion page | Time navigation tool bar including the following features (going from left to right): Calendar Date picker, Time selection box, Change Day buttons to move backward or forward by 1 day and Change Time buttons to move backward or forward by either 2 minutes or 1 hour. |
| 2019/01 - 2022/12 | Fusion page | Data availability panel showing time series for the Number of SuperDARN vector measurements alongside vertical bars to indicate the SMILE Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) integration periods. Data availability panel includes the interactive feature of clicking on the panel to reload the Fusion page with SXI and Fusion datasets for the datetime stamp at the corresponding cursor position. |
| 2019/01 - 2022/12 | Fusion page | SXI panel (bottom left) - SXI Field of View (FOV) image of error per pixel including the following features: Colormap drop-down menu to change between Grey, Viridis and Plasma color schemes, Color Scale slide bar to change maximum and minimum values of the color scale and two radio button group to switch display of image between either a Fixed or Variable aspect ratio. |
| 2019/01 - 2022/12 | Fusion page | Fusion panel (bottom right) - SuperDARN ionosphere radar maps of vector line of sight (LOS) directions or ionospheric flow vectors alongside contour map of the ionospheric convection electric field and outline of the Heppner Maynard Boundary (HMB). Also includes the following features: Buttons to add/remove SuperMAG ground magnetometer magnetic field vectors displayed on an equally gridded map, PyGeopack [1] magnetic field trace of the SMILE ephemeris and last closed field line (LCFL) and two radio button group to switch between SuperDARN radar LOS or Fitted Vector ionospheric velocity. At the time of production, the magnetic field line tracing of the SMILE ephemeris would not display when the magnetic field line tracing by PyGeopack [1] is unable to proceed down to mapping altitudes. This would occur for occasions SMILE is either on magnetic field lines that trace to the outer bounds in both positive and negative tracing directions or where the angular divergence between successive tracing steps is too large for an accurate tracing of the magnetic field line. The latter case occurs for magnetic field line tracing in high altitude cusp regions as related to the SMILE orbit reaching apogee and crossing high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. |
| 2019/01 - 2022/12 | Fusion page | Fusion panel / Advanced Options - Top row includes the drop-down menus to change altitude of PyGeopack [1] field line trace of the SMILE ephemeris as well as change the magnetic field line model used to perform the field line tracing. |
| 2019/01 - 2022/12 | Fusion page | Fusion panel / Advanced Options - Untick box 'Use OMNI data where available' to change values of OMNI data fields used to trace magnetic fields from the SMILE ephemeris. |
| 2019/01 - 2022/12 | Availability page | Time navigation tool bar including the following features (going from left to right): Year selection box, Month selection drop-down menu and buttons move backward and forward by 1 month. |
| 2019/01 - 2022/12 | Availability page | Hour by day grid displaying periods of available SXI and SuperDARN data for entire month. Data availability grid includes the interactive feature to load the 'Fusion' page by clicking on a time segment with available data. At this stage of the production, 9 days of simulated SMILE SXI and shifted SuperDARN data had been uploaded between the dates of 2024/12/01 to 2024/12/09. |
| 2019/01 - 2022/12 | Conjunction page | Time navigation tool bar - Follows the same form and function implemented by the Fusion page time navigation tool bar (see above). |
| 2019/01 - 2022/12 | Conjunction page | Conjunction planning panel (left of page) showing the conjunction of the PyGeopack [1] magnetic field trace of the SMILE ephemeris and the SuperDARN radars field of view as projected on a magnetic latitude / magnetic local time map. |
| 2019/01 - 2022/12 | Conjunction page | Conjunction planning panel / Advanced Options - Follows the same form and function implemented by the Fusion panel / Advanced Options (see above). |
| 2019/01 - 2022/12 | Conjunction page | Conjunction planning table (right of page) listing the SuperDARN radars and the length of time (to the nearest 10 minutes) the magnetic field footprint of SMILE is located within a SuperDARN radar field of view over a duration of 12 hours. At this stage of the production, the time calculated does not account for the Earth's rotation over the 12 hours. |
Release 2.0
| Timeline | Webpage | Updates |
|---|---|---|
| 2023/04 - 2023/11 | Home page | Web-address updated to https://www.smile-fusion.le.ac.uk/ |
| 2023/04 - 2023/11 | Fusion page | Time navigation tool bar - Date picker default date updated from 2024/12/01 to revised start of SMILE mission 2025/06/01, reinstated chevron symbols for time navigation buttons. |
| 2023/04 - 2023/11 | Fusion page | Data availability panel - Axis labels added to time series plot. |
| 2023/04 - 2023/11 | Fusion page | SXI panel (bottom left) - Main SXI Field of View (FOV) image updated to counts data in replacement of error per pixel data. |
| 2023/04 - 2023/11 | Fusion page | SXI panel (bottom left) - SXI FOV image updated with the following features: Buttons to add or remove projections in the SXI FOV of the Earth magnetopause, mesh frame representation of the Earth and orientation of Geocentric Solar Ecliptic (GSE) reference frame. The Earth magnetopause was determined in the GSE reference frame by entering the SXI derived magnetopause coefficients into the Jorgensen et al. (2019) [2] representation of the Shue et al. (1997) [3] Earth magnetopause model. Projections of the magnetopause are made for positions between +/-45° the sub-solar point along the ecliptic (GSE X/Y) plane and polar (GSE X/Z) plane and slices at constant GSE X / angles from the +GSE X axis (5°, 22°, 39°, 56°, 73°, 90°, 107°). |
| 2023/04 - 2023/11 | Fusion page | SXI panel / Data Product Selection - Drop-down section presenting a 'Plot Data' drop-down list to change between SXI (counts), SXI-RAW (error per pixel) and XR-Sources (unavailable at time of production). |
| 2023/04 - 2023/11 | Fusion page | Fusion panel (bottom right) - Updated with the following features: Buttons to add or remove projections of the solar terminator line, shading of the solar shadow, PyGeopack [1] magnetic field tracing from the magnetopause determined along the ecliptic (GSE X/Y) plane and as projected on the SXI FOV image (see above). The projection of the magnetic field line trace of the magnetopause also includes tick marks with decreasing size for every 5° from the sub-solar point. At the time of production, the magnetopause distances taken from the SXI simulations were decreased for demonstration purposes and to allow PyGeopack [1] to trace on closed magnetic field lines down to mapping altitudes. This helps avoid the timing out of the plotting tool from the combination of the additional processing time when tracing open magnetic field lines out to the outer boundaries of PyGeopack [1] and rendering 'NaN' values returned by PyGeopack [4]. |
| 2023/04 - 2023/11 | Conjunction page | Conjunction planning panel (left of page) - Corrected the pointing of the SuperDARN radars FOV by using the bore site directions and beam numbers provided by SuperDARN's Radar Software Toolkit (RST) [5] radar hardware files [6]. Also improved the plotting of the SuperDARN radars FOV by using ‘Dead reckoning’ to plot the intervening boundary between the boresite separation and the first and final range gate. |
| 2023/04 - 2023/11 | Conjunction page | Conjunction planning panel (left of page) - Updated with the following features: Buttons to add or remove projections of the solar terminator line and shading of the solar shadow. |
| 2023/04 - 2023/11 | Orbit page | Time navigation tool bar - Follows the same form and function implemented by the Fusion page time navigation tool bar (see above). |
| 2023/04 - 2023/11 | Orbit page | Orbit page includes the panels to display the SMILE orbit path (brown) in the GSE reference frame over SMILE's ∼52 hour orbital period, alongside plots of the Earth's magnetopause (blue) and bow shock (red) using the Shue et al. (1997) [3] magnetopause and Chao et al. (2002) [7] bow shock model. Also features a projection of the SXI line of sight (LOS) and markings made over the orbit path line to indicate the SXI integration periods. |
| 2023/04 - 2023/11 | Orbit page | Advanced Options - Drop down section with fields displaying OMNI data values as used to determine plots of Earth's magnetopause and bow shock. Includes option to untick box 'Use OMNI data where available' to change values of OMNI data fields and regenerate plots of Earth's magnetopause and bow shock. |
Release 3.0
| Timeline | Webpage | Updates |
|---|---|---|
| 2023/12 - 2024/05 | Fusion page | Fusion panel (bottom right) - Updated with the following features: Buttons to add or remove projections of observations from the SMILE Ultra-Violet Imager (UVI). At the time of production, a shaded area over the UVI-FOV is used for demonstration purposes as there was no UVI simulation data available. |
| 2023/12 - 2024/05 | Fusion page | Fusion panel (bottom right) - A previous error in the placement of the SuperDARN convection electric field contour map has been corrected for latest SuperDARN data uploaded onto the SMILE DFF (see below). |
| 2023/12 - 2024/05 | Fusion page | Fusion panel / Data Product Selection - Drop-down section presenting a 'Plot Data' drop-down list to switch between Northern and Southern hemisphere maps of the SuperDARN ionospheric convection electric field and plasma flow data. At the time of production, the only SuperDARN data from the Southern hemisphere available on the site was for 2025/12/15. |
| 2023/12 - 2024/05 | Fusion page | Fusion panel / Advanced Options - Additional buttons to 'Confirm changes' or 'Reset OMNI data' are provided to improve the function of changing the parameters used by PyGeopack [1] to trace the magnetic field lines from the SMILE ephemeris. By unticking the 'Use OMNI data where available' it is now possible to change more than one field at a time before reloading the magnetic field line trace of the SMILE ephemeris by selecting the 'Confirm changes' button. Selecting the 'Reset OMNI data' button will restore the OMNI data used in the initial magnetic field line trace of the SMILE ephemeris. |
| 2023/12 - 2024/05 | Availability page | At this stage of the production, 15 more days of simulated SMILE SXI data and northern hemisphere SuperDARN data had been uploaded between the dates of 2025/12/01 to 2025/12/15. In the case of the SuperDARN data, all data was taken from 12 years prior between 2013/12/01 to 2013/12/15. |
| 2023/12 - 2024/05 | Availability page | Hour by day grid updated with addition of a diagonal hatched pattern to indicate inclusion of SuperDARN data from the southern hemisphere. At the time of production, only 1 day of SuperDARN data from the Southern hemisphere has been uploaded and shifted by 12 years to the date of 2025/12/15. |
| 2023/12 - 2024/05 | Conjunction page | Conjunction planning panel (left of page) - Updated with the following features: Buttons to add or remove projections of the LCFL, locations of search-coil magnetometers, FOV's of all-sky imager (ASI) network, FOV's of incoherent scatter radars (ISR) and FOV of SMILE's UVI. |
| 2023/12 - 2024/05 | Conjunction page | Conjunction planning panel / Data Product Selection - Drop-down section presenting a 'Plot Data' drop-down list to switch between Northern and Southern hemisphere maps showing the conjunction of the PyGeopack [1] magnetic field trace of the SMILE ephemeris and the FOV's of SuperDARN radars. |
| 2023/12 - 2024/05 | Conjunction page | Conjunction planning panel / Advanced Options - Additional buttons to 'Confirm changes' or 'Reset OMNI data' are provided with the same form and function as implemented by the Fusion panel / Advanced Options (see above). |
| 2023/12 - 2024/05 | Conjunction page | Conjunction planning table (right of page) list of SuperDARN radars updated using information gathered from RST-5 [5] radar hardware files [6]. At the time of production, the list of SuperDARN radars did not include radars commissioned onwards from 2023. |
| 2023/12 - 2024/05 | Orbit page | Advanced Options - Additional buttons to 'Confirm changes' or 'Reset OMNI data' are provided to improve the function of changing the parameters used to determine plots of Earth's magnetopause and bow shock. By unticking the 'Use OMNI data where available' it is now possible to change more than one field at a time before the magnetopause and bow shock are replotted by selecting the 'Confirm changes' button. Selecting the 'Reset OMNI data' button will restore the initial set of OMNI data to the data fields and also restore the initial plots of the magnetopause and bow shock. |
Release 3.1
| Timeline | Webpage | Updates |
|---|---|---|
| 2024/06 - 2024/10 | Fusion page | Fusion panel (bottom right) - Updated with the following features: For occasions the SMILE DFF does not display magnetic field line tracing of the SMILE ephemeris for the reasons outlined above, SMILE DFF employs Karl Laundal's Pure Python International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF) model of the Earth's main magnetic field [8] for the magnetic field line tracing of the SMILE ephemeris down to mapping altitudes. Such sections of the SMILE ephemeris magnetic field line tracing are displayed on the Fusion panel as a thick dashed brown line. |
| 2024/06 - 2024/10 | Orbit page | Updated with the following features: Buttons to add or remove projections of the SMILE SXI and UVI LOS / FOV. |
Release 4.0
| Timeline | Webpage | Updates |
|---|---|---|
| 2024/11 - 2025/01 | Fusion page | Data availability panel - Updated with additional time-series plot for the SMILE SXI derived sub-solar magnetopause distance. |
| 2024/11 - 2025/01 | Fusion page | Fusion panel (bottom right) - The step of decreasing the distance of the SXI derived magnetopause along the ecliptic (GSE X/Y) plane is no longer used as a method to ensure magnetic field line tracing of the magnetopause down to mapping altitudes (see above). To better match PyGeopack [1] to trace magnetic field lines from the distances of the SXI derived magnetopause down to mapping altitudes, the OMNI data of the solar wind dynamic pressure used by PyGeopack [1] is replaced with a solar wind dynamic pressure determined using the Shue et al. (1997) [3] Earth magnetopause model and the SXI derived sub-solar distance of the magnetopause. However, sometimes this is not sufficient for the tracing of magnetic field lines down to mapping altitudes and for demonstration purposes, the magnetopause derived solar wind pressure is reduced by 20% before using in PyGeopack [1]. |
| 2025/01 | Fusion and Orbit page | The selected datetime made on either Fusion, Orbit or Availability pages is now saved and carried over to both Fusion and Orbit pages. |
| 2025/01 | Site updates page | New webpage created to provide a timeline of updates made to the SMILE DFF. |
| 2025/01 | Fusion page | Fusion panel (bottom right) - Corrected pointer text info box to show Mlat and Mlt where previously missing. Also updated with pointer text box for UVI-FOV and ephemeris IGRF only magnetic field line tracing. |
References
- Matt James' Python wrapper for Geopack-2008 (PyGeopack): https://github.com/mattkjames7/PyGeopack
- Jorgensen et al. 2019, Boundary Detection in Three Dimensions with Application to the SMILE mission: The Effect of Model-Fitting Noise, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JA026124
- Shue et al. 1997, A new functional form to study the solar wind control of the magnetopause size and shape, https://doi.org/10.1029/97JA00196
- Bokeh server slow to render lots of NaN values (but fast enough in notebook): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52273673/bokeh-server-slow-to-render-lots-of-nan-values-but-fast-enough-in-notebook
- SuperDARN Radar Software Toolkit (RST): https://github.com/SuperDARN/rst
- SuperDARN radars hardware files: https://github.com/SuperDARN/hdw
- Chao et al. 2002, Models for the size and shape of the earth's magnetopause and bow shock, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0964-2749(02)80212-8
- Karl Laundal's Pure Python International Geomagnetic Reference Field (ppigrf): https://github.com/IAGA-VMOD/ppigrf