MAGNETOSPHERE
Live Data
Canada (real-time)
A complete list of real-time data links is located in the Space Weather Resources section.
From Observatories: Canada
The More Advanced Observations allow you to look at magnetograms from all of the observatories in the Geological Survey of Canada system, including Baker Lake.
The Canada (real-time) link will take you directly to the Summary Plot for all of the Canadian observatories.
This set up is a rather typical window for a website that serves data to scientists. The Canadian Geological Survey provides this access to data from a dozen magnetic observatories all across Canada. Here's how to use it.
First, check the date in the pull-down menus- it should be the current data. You can change the data by entering the current month, day and year into the windows by using the menu bar immediately to the right of each window, and then highlighting the desired date. You will note that with this same page you could look at daily magnetic data all the way back to 2001 if you wanted to!
TEACHER'S NOTE
This is an excellent resource for more advanced research. Students can use this archive to investigate magnetic disturbances during the past several years. Students might ask if all large disturbances are associated with solar storms. Archived data from Radio Waves can be compared with archived magnetometer data.
Next click on the 'Submit Request' button. In a few seconds you will see a window open up that looks like this:
It's a very busy page because the scientists want to show you all the data at once.
This diagram shows the data from the Canadian observatories. For each station, the X (north-south), Y (east-west) and Z (vertical) components of the magnetic field are shown. Stations are displayed starting with the most northerly at the top progressing down the page in decreasing latitude. Universal Time is used. All frames use the same scale (which automatically adjusts to cover the largest variation), so that the relative strengths of the field at different stations can be readily compared.
Like the Kiruna data, these plots show deflection - the average field of Earth is subtracted so that you can more easily see the bumps and wiggles.
What you might notice by looking down the columns of the original web page is that the plots are stacked so that vertically the same time appears for each of the three magnetic components. This means that you can quickly scan these plots from top to bottom in each component to see a magnetic storm develop, and move from one station to the next to see the storms geographic spread. Or you might see that there is a disturbance further north that didn't reach very far south.
- NASA Official: Dr. James Thieman
- Project Manager: Don Robinson-Boonstra
- Website Manager: Bryan Stephenson