SDO | Data

 

Best Practice for getting SDO Browse Data.

SDO provides near-real-time (NRT) images that are updated every 15 minutes. They are designed for Space Weather operators and citizen scientists. You can examine the images on the SDO website or download them for use elsewhere. The best way to regularly download our latest NRT images is a script using either a wget or curl command. Once a script tailored to your needs has been developed it can be invoked automatically as a cron job.

The best method to download our NRT images is to use the wget utility.


Cadence

Best practice would be to retrieve a new images once every fifteen minutes.

Example crontab:

*/15 * * * * bash /path/to/script > /path/to/output 2>&1 &

Downloading latest NRT images

Our latest images are located in the /assets/inmg/latest directory and have a common naming convention as see below. There are four resolutions available and 15 images.

URL: https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_[ resolution ]_[ wavelength ].jpg

Resolutions: [ 4096, 2048, 1024, 512 ]

Wavelengths: [ 0094, 0193, 0171, 0304, 0211, 0131, 0335, 1600, 1700, hmib, hmii, hmibc, hmiic, hmiif, hmid ]


Example bash code — using wget:

#!/bin/sh

LATEST_URL=https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest
WAVELENGTHS=( 0094 0131 0171 0193 0211 0304 0335 1600 1700 HMIB HMII HMID HMIBC HMIIF HMIIC )
RESOLUTIONS=( 2048 1024 512 )

for WAVE in ${WAVELENGTHS[@]}
do
    FILENAME="latest_4096_"$WAVE".jpg"
    
    #wget command
    wget --quiet --tries=1 $LATEST_URL/$FILENAME --output-document=/PATH/TO/$FILENAME
    
    for RES in ${RESOLUTIONS[@]}
    do
        convert -resize $RESx$RES /PATH/TO/$FILENAME "/PATH/TO/latest_"$RES"_"$WAVE".jpg"
    done
done

Getting images from the browse directories

The browse directories are the drilldown directories deliniated by date. These images also have a common naming convention consisting of date/time stamp, resolution, and instrument or wavelength.

Example directory drilldown

 

We publish times files consisting of the latest timestamps. Best practice would be to get the approriate times file, parse the timestamp and use that to build your wget command. See the example below.

#!/bin/sh

WAVE=$1
SDOURL=https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov
SDOTIMES=$SDOURL"/assets/img/latest/times"$WAVE".txt"
BROWSEDIR=$SDOURL"/assets/img/browse"
LOCALDIR=/PATH/TO/LOCAL/DIRECTORY
RESOLUTIONS=( 2048 1024 512 )

wget $SDOTIMES --output-document=$LOCALDIR"/times"$WAVE".txt"

if [[ -s $LOCALDIR"/times"$WAVE".txt" ]]
then
	TIMEFILE=$LOCALDIR"/times"$WAVE".txt"
	LASTTIMEFILE=$LOCALDIR"/lasttimes"$WAVE".txt"
	ONELINE=`awk 'NR==1' "$TIMEFILE"`
	LASTONELINE=`awk 'NR==1' "$LASTTIMEFILE"`
	DATETIME=${ONELINE:6:15} 
	LASTDATETIME=${LASTONELINE:6:15}
	
	if [[ $DATETIME != $LASTDATETIME ]]
	then
		DATETIMEPATH=${DATETIME:0:4}"/"${DATETIME:4:2}"/"${DATETIME:6:2}
		FILE4k=${DATETIME:0:8}"_"${DATETIME:9:6}"_4096_"$WAVE".jpg"
		FILE2048=${DATETIME:0:8}"_"${DATETIME:9:6}"_2048_"$WAVE".jpg"
		FILE1024=${DATETIME:0:8}"_"${DATETIME:9:6}"_1024_"$WAVE".jpg"
		FILE512=${DATETIME:0:8}"_"${DATETIME:9:6}"_512_"$WAVE".jpg"
		wget $BROWSEDIR/$DATETIMEPATH/$FILE4k --output-document=$LOCALDIR/$FILE4k
		
		for RES in ${RESOLUTIONS[@]}
		do
			file="FILE"$RES
			convert -resize $RESx$RES $LOCALDIR/$FILE4k $LOCALDIR"/"${!file}
		done
		
		cp $TIMEFILE $LASTTIMEFILE
	else
		echo times file has not changed
	fi
else
	echo Times file is empty
fi