MAGNETOSPHERE
Live Data
Baker Lake, Canada (real-time)
A complete list of real-time data links is located in the Space Weather Resources section.
From Observatories: Baker Lake, Canada
Since it is always good to have more than one source of data, you will also need magnetometer data from Baker Lake, Canada. To do this, you will need to go to the Canada website and use their menus to browse to Baker Lake. The page will look like this.
The page should appear with BLC, Baker Lake, Canada in the Observatory drop-down menu. If it doesn't, click on the arrows and select BLC, Baker Lake, Canada. The current Month, Day and Year should appear in those drop-down menus above the Observatory menu. If you want to see magnetograms from previous days or weeks, use those drop-down menus to select the Month, Day and Year you want to view. In the above image May 30, 2003 was selected.
When you click "Submit Request" you will get the plot of the magnetic fields for Baker Lake on the day you selected. For this exercise May 30, 2003 was selected and the magnetogram for that day appears below.
Notice that this observatory provides three separate plots; one for X, one for Y and one for Z. The horizontal axis is Universal Time (UT) .
This plot doesn't show the Deflection. The vertical axes show the real strength of the magnetic field in nT (nano-Tesla). Since you aren't told what the normal field strength is, you must look for changes in the field strength. It is often helpful to look at previous days' plots. Large changes indicate large storms. Only experience will tell you if these fluctuations indicate minor or major storms. There seem to be fairly large changes during the 24-hour period that is plotted above, and, indeed, a large storm was in progress on May 30. 2003.
For comparison see the plot below of May 31, 2003 - the day after the storm.
The magnetic field was fairly steady from about 6 UT until 2400 UT. These two graphs show that storm conditions existed during the early morning of May 30 and again from about 1500 UT until early morning on the 31st. This compares well with the Kp and Kiruna data.
After you become comfortable getting and using Kp data and data from Kiruna and Baker Lake, you may want to make More Advanced Observations.
TEACHER'S NOTE
Baker Lake, Canada is actually part of the Canada website (more advanced section). It is easier to understand this simple plot first, then move on to the more complicated features of the site.
- NASA Official: Dr. James Thieman
- Project Manager: Don Robinson-Boonstra
- Website Manager: Bryan Stephenson