The SPEDAS development team is pleased to announce the release of SPEDAS version 6.1!

The most notable update in SPEDAS 6.1 is support for an updated THEMIS FGM calibration file format, which is not compatible with SPEDAS 6.0 and earlier.  The new file format provides better tracking of the variation of Bz offsets, especially in recent THEMIS-E data.

We encourage all SPEDAS users who are still using older releases to upgrade to SPEDAS 6.1 (or a current nightly zip file) as soon as possible. The installation instructions, source code, IDL save files, and precompiled virtual machine executables for Mac, Linux, and Windows are all available for download from the SPEDAS web site:

http://spedas.org/wiki/index.php?title=Downloads_and_Installation

Please email questions, bug reports, help requests, and enhancement suggestions to SPEDAS_Science_Support@ssl.berkeley.edu

The SPEDAS software development has been supported by NASA contracts NAS5-02099 (THEMIS mission), NNG17PZ01C (SPEDAS general development), and NNG04EB99C (MMS sub-contract).

We would also like to thank the many software developers and SPEDAS users who have supported the development effort by contributing code, reporting problems, and suggesting enhancements.

Here is a brief summary of some of the other changes since SPEDAS 6.0 was released in January 2024:

Core Function Improvements

• Core function improvements (time_double leap second handling) (March)
• Core function improvements (custom_tick_expression, interp) (May)
• Core function improvements (HDF reader merge, summary plot AE index) (June)

Plugin Enhancements

• Plugin enhancements (THEMIS data types, OMNIweb data gaps) (March)
• Plugin enhancements (MAVEN SWE-SWI calibrations, TRANGE keywords) (May)
• Plugin enhancements (GOES-R plugin update, Kaguya SPICE kernels) (June)
• MMS plugin enhancements (FEEPS sunlight contamination masking, mms_load_state bug fix, spectrogram improvements) (February)
• MMS plugin enhancements (FEEPS bad eye removal, load routine improvements) (March)
• MMS plugin enhancements (SITL quick science parameter set, compatibility updates) (April)
• MMS plugin enhancements (SITL OBSSET update, status code improvements) (May)
• RBSP plugin enhancements (rbsp_load_spice_predict.pro) (January)
• MAVEN plugin enhancements (summary plots, L2 CDF generation) (January)
• OMNIweb plugin enhancements (load routine with no_download, use_local_file_first) (January)
• ELFIN plugin enhancements (load routines for time range, multiple CDF versions) (January)
• New mission support for Magstar ground magnetometer data (February)
• MAVEN quick-look tool update (February)
• MAVEN summary plots improvements, BAZEL keyword for orbit plots (April)
• WIND plugin enhancements (wi_waves_load, PSD_FLUX, PSD_SFU) (January)
• WIND plugin enhancements (master CDF metadata utilization) (February)
• OMNIWeb load routine improvements (code duplication removal) (April)

Other Improvements

• Leap second update for time_ephemeris SPICE routine (January)
• Improved color table management (get_line_colors, crib sheet) (January)
• Bug fix (tplot line color handling) (April)

The SPEDAS development team is pleased to announce the release of SPEDAS version 6.0!

We encourage all SPEDAS users who are still using older releases to upgrade to SPEDAS 6.0 (or a current nightly zip file) as soon as possible. The installation instructions, source code, IDL save files, and precompiled virtual machine executables for Mac, Linux, and Windows are all available for download from the SPEDAS web site:

http://spedas.org/wiki/index.php?title=Downloads_and_Installation

Please email questions, bug reports, help requests, and enhancement suggestions to SPEDAS_Science_Support@ssl.berkeley.edu

The SPEDAS software development has been supported by NASA contracts NAS5-02099 (THEMIS mission), NNG17PZ01C (SPEDAS general development), and NNG04EB99C (MMS sub-contract).

We would also like to thank the many software developers and SPEDAS users who have supported the development effort by contributing code, reporting problems, and suggesting enhancements.

Here is a brief summary of some of the changes since SPEDAS 5.0 was released in Spring 2022:

SPEDAS GUI

• Added support for TA16 model to Magnetic Field Models panel
• Improved support for high resolution displays

Analysis Tools and Utilities

• Added support for GEOPACK TA16 model
• Improvements and bug fixes to CDF reader
• Added spd_mtm.pro, Simone di Matteo’s tool for power spectrum analysis using the Multi Taper Method
• Bug fixes and improvements to wavpol wave polarization analysis
• Updated SPICE kernels for leap seconds and spacecraft ephemerides
• Added new tplot utilities tmean, deriv2_data, tprint_multiaxis
• Bug fix for deriv_data utility

Plotting

• Improved support for managing color maps and line colors

Plugins

• Updated support for loading data via CDAWeb
• New version of the ERG plugin from the Arase team
• Updated URLs for several data providers
• Numerous incremental improvements and bug fixes to THEMIS, MMS, Parker Solar Probe, MAVEN, ELFIN, VEX, and MEX plugins

Crib Sheets

• Added more crib sheets for GEOPACK field models
• Added crib sheet for spd_mtm
• Added crib for plotting contours on tplot spectral data

The SPEDAS development team is pleased to announce the release of SPEDAS version 5.0!

SPEDAS 5.0 contains several significant updates to the interface to the GEOPACK magnetic field modeling library, including newly added support for the TA15B and TA15N field models and supporting routines.

The SPEDAS GUI has been updated to greatly improve its appearance and usability on both smaller displays, and larger high-resolution displays under a variety of OS display configuration options.

New plugins have been added to support downloads of the British Antarctic Survay magnetometer data set, for the SOSMAG geosynchronous magnetometer data set, and for downloading Cluster data directly from the Cluster Science Archive.

Many other plugins, including MMS, ERG, IUGONET, and ELFIN, have been updated to the latest available code from their respective developers.

A more detailed list of changes implemented since the release of SPEDAS 4.1 is available in the SPEDAS 5.0 release notes:

http://spedas.org/downloads/SPEDAS_5_0_release_notes.pdf

We encourage all SPEDAS users who are still using older releases to upgrade to SPEDAS 5.0 (or a current nightly zip file) as soon as possible. The installation instructions, source code, IDL save files, and precompiled virtual machine executables for Mac, Linux, and Windows are all available for download from the SPEDAS web site:

http://spedas.org/wiki/index.php?title=Downloads_and_Installation

Please email questions, bug reports, help requests, and enhancement suggestions to SPEDAS_Science_Support@ssl.berkeley.edu

The SPEDAS software development has been supported by NASA contracts NAS5-02099 (THEMIS mission), NNG17PZ01C
(SPEDAS general development), and NNG04EB99C (MMS sub-contract). We would also like to thank the many software developers and SPEDAS users who have supported the development effort by contributing code, reporting problems, and suggesting enhancements.

We were recently notified by a SPEDAS user that there was a problem with the SPEDAS 4.0 interface to the GEOPACK library.  Specifically, the field line tracing routines were crashing if the TS07 field model was selected.  

We have corrected the issue, and built a new release, SPEDAS 4.1, containing the updated code.  This is the only difference from the previous SPEDAS 4.0 release. W.e recommend that SPEDAS 4.0 users update as soon as possible to SPEDAS 4.1. The IDL source code, and compiled Virtual Machine executables, are available from the SPEDAS Downloads and Installation page.

The SPEDAS development team is pleased to announce the release of SPEDAS 4.0!

SPEDAS 4.0 includes numerous updates and enhancements to the command-line TPLOT plotting and analysis tools, as well as the GUI plotting and analysis tools. New plugins have been added to load MICA induction magnetometer data, and Cluster datasets available via SPDF. Several other plugins were updated with the latest available tools from their respective development teams. In particular, the MMS plugin has been updated to fix a bug that caused problems when using SPEDAS 3.2 to download data from the MMS Science Data Center.

The latest IGRF-13 field model has been added to SPEDAS 4.0, and is now used for coordinate transforms to and from the GSM system.

SPEDAS 4.0 includes support for downloading data from servers using the DAS2 protocol. Several crib sheets are available showing how to download data for the Galileo, Cassini, and Juno missions. This feature requires installation of an external DLM and platform-specific shared library (much like the GEOPACK and SPICE libraries), and is currently available for Linux and Windows only. Many thanks to Alexander Drozdov at UCLA, and Chris Piker at University of Iowa, for making DAS2 services available in SPEDAS!

For a more detailed list of new features, enhancements, and bug fixes since SPEDAS 3.2, please see the release notes, at http://spedas.org/downloads/SPEDAS_4_0_release_notes.pdf

As usual, SPEDAS 4.0 is available as a source code zip file (suitable for users with full IDL licenses). For users without IDL licenses, we have also released the SPEDAS 4.0 “virtual machine” executables for Linux, Mac, and Windows. SPEDAS 4.0 downloads, installation instructions, and platform-specific installation notes are available via the SPEDAS wiki Downloads and Installation page .

Please email questions, bug reports, help requests, and enhancement suggestions to SPEDAS_Science_Support@ssl.berkeley.edu

The SPEDAS software development has been supported by NASA contracts NAS5-02099 (THEMIS mission), NNG17PZ01C  (SPEDAS general development), and NNG04EB99C (MMS sub-contract).  We would also like to thank the many software developers and SPEDAS users who have supported the development effort by contributing code, reporting problems, and suggesting enhancements.

The SPEDAS development team is pleased to announce the release of SPEDAS 3.2!

SPEDAS 3.2 includes numerous updates and enhancements to the command-line tplot plotting and analysis tools, as well as the Graphical User Interface (GUI). The CDF support code has been updated with improved functionality and performance under different IDL releases and CDF library versions. The SPEDAS tools for interacting with the CDAWeb archive, HAPI servers, and Autoplot have also been improved. This release also includes the latest available versions of the MMS, ERG (Arase), IUGONET, and Akebono plugins from their respective developers, along with incremental updates to the support for THEMIS, GOES, WIND, and other missions.

SPEDAS 3.2 also includes command-line tools (under the projects/SPP directory) for working with Parker Solar Probe data, which has recently been publicly released

For a more detailed list of new features, enhancements, and bug fixes since SPEDAS 3.1, please see the release notes, at http://spedas.org/downloads/SPEDAS_3_2_release_notes.pdf

As usual, SPEDAS 3.2 is available as a source code zip file (suitable for users with full IDL licenses). For users without IDL licenses, we have also released the SPEDAS 3.2 “virtual machine” executables for Linux, Mac, and Windows. SPEDAS 3.2 downloads, installation instructions, and platform-specific installation notes are available via the SPEDAS wiki Downloads and Installation page .

Please email questions, bug reports, help requests, and enhancement suggestions to SPEDAS_Science_Support@ssl.berkeley.edu

The SPEDAS software development has been supported by NASA contracts NAS5-02099 (THEMIS mission), NNG17PZ01C  (SPEDAS general development), and NNG04EB99C (MMS sub-contract).  We would also like to thank the many software developers and SPEDAS users who have supported the development effort by contributing code, reporting problems, and suggesting enhancements.

In December 2018, “The Space Physics Environment Data Analysis System (SPEDAS)” was accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews.

If you benefit from SPEDAS code, please consider citing this paper. You can simply add the citation in your acknowledgment, and that could include your software version. For example: “Data access and processing was done using SPEDAS V3.1, see Angelopoulos et al., 2019” and that would be natural and informative for readers.

http://spedas.org/wiki/index.php?title=Downloads_and_Installation#Troubleshooting_and_special_considerations

New plugins:

A new plugin has been implemented to support the upcoming ICON mission. Data from the FUV and EUV instruments can be loaded and plotted via the command line, or the SPEDAS GUI. Two “crib sheets” showing how to work with ICON data from the command line are available: icon_crib.pro, and icon_crib_euv.pro, both under the projects/icon directory.

A command line plugin for loading data from the SWEAP instrument on the Parker Solar Probe has been added to the SPEDAS distribution.

Updated Plugins:

The plugin supporting the ERG (“Arase”) mission has been updated to include a number of command-line load routines and crib sheets showing how to work with the recently-released L2 data products. The crib sheets include

• erg_crib_hep.pro
• erg_crib_l3_orb.pro
• erg_crib_lepe.pro
• erg_crib_lepi.pro
• erg_crib_mepe.pro
• erg_crib_mepi.pro
• erg_crib_mgf.pro
• erg_crib_pwe.pro, and
• erg_crib_xep.pro,

all under the projects/erg/satellite/erg/examples directory.

The MMS plugin is still under very active development, and many updates have been made since the SPEDAS 3.00 release:

• Fixed bug with HPCA angular spectra in mms_part_getspec/spd_slice2d codes (conflicting assumptions when loading the data led to incorrect results)
• Updated MMS routines and crib sheets to use L2 GSE data products instead of near-GSE data products
• Added new mms_part_slice2d, mms_part_isee3d (MMS specific wrappers around spd_slice2d and ISEE3D)
• Implemented new DES internal photoelectron model in mms_part_getspec
• Added pitch angle contours to the FPI azimuth vs. zenith plots
• Added a keyword to the MMS load routines for preserving TT2000 timestamps from the CDFs

A number of other plugins have been updated to the latest versions available from their respective developers, including DSCOVR, GOES, SECS, and Kaguya.

New general-purpose tools

Several new tools have been implemented in this release:

• tplot2cdf, for making ISTP-compliant CDFs from tplot variables (crib sheet crib_tplot2cdf_basic, under general/examples)
• tplot2ap, ap2tplot: Import/export data and metadata between SPEDAS and Autoplot (crib sheet crib_tplot2ap.pro, under general/spedas_tools/tplot2ap)
• GUI panel for Minimum Variance Analysis (MVA)
• spd_flipbookify tool, for generating series of plots from 2-d slices over a time range (MMS crib sheet mms_flipbook_crib.pro, under projects/mms/examples/advanced; THEMIS crib sheet thm_crib_flipbookify.pro under projects/themis/examples/advanced)

Improvements to existing tools:

• Several new servers added to “Load via HAPI” feature
•  Added command line and GUI support for latest GEOPACK library version 10.5, including support for the TS07 field model and automatic downloading of TS07 model coefficients
• New spd_slice2d keyword ‘plotorigin’, to allow plotting of second origin on 2d slice plots, denoting solar wind or bulk velocity, rather than an often-indistinguishable arrow
• More efficient memory management for some tplot tools
• New tplot option ‘auto_downsample’, to produce improved plots by downsampling data, removing nonphysical artifacts that can occur in certain plots with data resolution higher than the plot resolution
• More intuitive order of rotations in slice2d tool
• SPEDAS GUI menus were updated with more intuitive labels and menu structure

http://spedas.org/wiki/index.php?title=Downloads_and_Installation#Troubleshooting_and_special_considerations

The SPEDAS development team is pleased to announce the final release of SPEDAS version 2.00!

New features and capabilities for this release include:

• Support for HTTPS downloads (now required by several data sources)
• A new load routine, hapi_load_data, to support downloading data via the new Heliophysics API. A crib sheet is available in general/examples/crib_hapi.pro.
• ISEE 3D particle data visualization tool, with support for displaying THEMIS, MMS, and GEOTAIL data. A crib sheet is available in projects/themis/examples/advanced/thm_crib_isee3d.pro.
• Updated IGRF coefficients through 2015
• Numerous bug fixes and efficiency improvements

Updated plugins:

• MMS (curlometer code, ISEE 3d plots, angle-angle plots)
• THEMIS (combined electron and ion moments, improved SST calibrations, improved spacecraft potential estimates, support for additional GMAG networks and sites, support for ESA low energy mode)
• ERG/IUGONET (updated load routines for better HTTP and future HTTPS support)

The SPEDAS 2.00 IDL source code release can be downloaded from the spedas.org web site:
http://spedas.org/wiki/index.php?title=Downloads_and_Installation

The IDL source code release requires an IDL license.  In a few weeks, we expect to release a set of SPEDAS 2.00 executable files, which use the IDL Virtual Machine to allow access to the SPEDAS Graphical User Interface, with no IDL license required.  That release is pending, while we work through the process of renewing our IDL “Right to Distribute” agreement which is required for us to build the executable files. In the meantime, users without IDL licenses can download executables based on a SPEDAS 2.00 beta release from January 2017.  Please visit the spedas.org Downloads and Installation link mentioned above for download and installation instructions.

We are grateful to NASA Headquarters for their support of the SPEDAS development effort.