About the PROBA2 Science Center

Fri, 06/15/2012 - 10:37 — Bram Bourgoignie

PROBA2

The PROBA2 Science Center, located at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Brussels, oversees scientific operations and data processing for ESA's PROBA2 spacecraft. The P2SC is the primary archive and distribution center for data from SWAP and LYRA, as well as the primary maintainer of calibration tools, data analysis software, and additional instrument data. The P2SC is also home to the science operations center, where instrument observing plans are devised and, with the help of ESA's Spacecraft Operations Center in Redu, Belgium, loaded onto the spacecraft. Finally, the P2SC serves as the main site for coordination of the PROBA2 Science Working Team, coordinating special scientific campaigns, supporting science data users and guest investigators, and organizing PROBA2 outreach efforts.

PROBA2 is a small ESA satellite with a scientific mission to explore the active Sun and its effect on the near-earth environment and a broader mission to provide a test platform for new instrument and platform technology. The mission overview page provides additional information about PROBA2 and its on board instrumentation and advanced platform technology.

If you require special assistance, you can contact the instrument teams directly using the contact page on this new site.

News

PROBA2 Eclipse Observations - 21-Aug-2017

Fri, 06/23/2017 - 13:24 — Matthew West

Figure 1. SWAP eclipse image sequence from the first passage of the 2017 August 21 eclipse.

UPDATE: The SWAP images are received from the satellite. Check out the pictures and movies below.

Monday, 21 August 2017 has marked an important celestial event, a total solar eclipse. This was a well observed event, as the eclipse transited the whole of North America. The path of the eclipse can be seen here. People along the path saw a total eclipse, and those outside this path witnessed a partial solar eclipse where the moon covers part of the sun's disk. The eclipse was visible for about two and a half minutes from any location along the path of totality, and first seen on the west coast of the USA in Oregon at around 10:19 am PDT and finally in South Carolina at around 02:44 p.m EDT (more timing information can be found here). For more information on other types of eclipses, visit here.

Read more about PROBA2 Eclipse Observations - 21-Aug-2017

Automated SWAP Carrington Rotation Movies Online - Now with daily updates!

Tue, 06/13/2017 - 16:30 — Matthew West

The PROBA2 team is proud to present fully automated and daily updated Carrington rotation movies. A Carrington Rotation is a period of time chosen to represent one rotation of the Sun, allowing the comparison of features such as sunspot groups or active regions (a description of active regions can be found here). A period of 27.28 days was chosen to represent a single rotation that largely resembles the recurrence time of features near the equator.

The rotation period was initially conceived by Richard Carrington, when he determined the rotation rate of low latitude sunspots. Carrington determined a rotation rate of 25.38 days relative to background stars (sidereal rotation period). However, due to the Earths orbit, this is perceived as 27.28 days from the Earth. Each rotation of the Sun is assigned a Carrington Rotation Number, starting from 09-Nov-1853. That number has now reached 2194 at time of writing (13-Jun-2017); More information can be found here.