TIDE Processing Software Peak Ranges

There are several ways to limit the spin angle and energy ranges used in the moments calculation. One way is to use the peaks in the energy and spin angle curves. The peak range file can be created manually (see format below) or it can be created interactively over the web using the Peaks link on the TIDE home page.

This file can be created manually using the following format or it can be created using the Peaks website.

The recommended peaks output filename format is: tyymmddh1m1_h2m2.ext1 where t stand for TIDE, yymmdd is the 2-digit year, month, and day-of-month of the plot start time, h1m1 are the start hour and minute, h2m2 are the stop hour and minute, and ext1 is the peaks extension (.pk_rng). This is the filename the web uses. If h2m2 is smaller than h1m1, the plot crosses a day boundary.

The first line in the file has the mass-to-charge ratio of the ion used in the moments and the polar angle limits used in the calculation. Separate each field with a space. The next three lines are repeated for each time-dependent energy and/or spin angle:

Line #	format	content
1	(4(a8,1x))	start date (mm/dd/yy), start time (hh:mm:ss), stop date (mm/dd/yy), stop time (hh:mm:ss)
2	f7.3,1x,f7.3	energy range of peak (min/max)
3	f7.3,1x,f7.3	spin angle range of peak (min/max)

If you want the spin angle to wrap around 0/360 degrees, enter the larger angle as the minimum and the smaller angle as the maximum.

If the file was created from the Peaks website, the ranges listed are energy and angle bin centers. For manually created files, any value within an energy or angle bin is good enough to have that bin included. Try not to use exact bin boundaries. That may result in including a bin in the calculation that you had not wanted. See energy_angle.bins for a list of bin centers and boundaries.

The Peaks website lets you pick the energy and spin angle peaks for your time period, lets you download the .pk_rng file for use in the IDL version of the software, and it lets you use the peak range file to limit the moments calculation in either moments or velocity distribution plots.

The first menu item asks for the start and stop date range of the data to be processed. The date can be enter as year/day-of-year (yyyydoy) or year/month/day-of-month (yyyymmdd). The year must be four digits. Time is entered in hour/minute/second (hhmmss). Seconds must be included even if they are 00. Do not use any spaces. Use the tab key or the mouse to move from one date/time field to the next.

Then you are asked to enter the ion you want to find the peaks for, the flux units to use on the vertical axis of the energy and spin angle curve plots, the number of spins to average (recommended value is 50 which is 5 minutes), and the polar angle range. For Stops, you can estimate the polar angle distribution.

The remaining menu items detemine what mask to use, whether or not to correct the mask subtraction (See TIDE Ion Mask File for details), and whether or not to use the sector sensitivity correction (See Instrument Calibration for details).

Once you have made all the changes you want to the default plot settings, Submit request. To clear the form Reset Form. Once you Submit request, the processing software will calculate the spin and energy curves and locate the peaks in them. Once the processing is completed, you will get a new webpage with the energy and spin angle curves for each spin average in your requested time period.

At the top of this page, you can select what type of processing you want done: moments or velocity distribution plots (VDP), the number of spins to average for this processing, spacecraft potential source and correction, and for Stops, the mass-to-ratio to used in the flux calculations.

The page also has the flux versus spin and flux versus energy curves for each spin-averaged data set in your peak time range. For the spin curve, the flux was averaged over energy and polar angle. For the energy curve, the flux was averaged over spin and polar angle. There may be more than one peak in each of the curves so there are radio buttons on the left side of each curve that let you pick the peak range you want to use. You must pick one spin angle and one energy peak for each time period. The fewer spins you average, the more curves you will have. If you do not like the peaks chosen, you can enter your on limits for each peak. Once you have selected the peaks you want, Submit request. To clear the form Reset Form. Once you Submit request, the processing software creates the .pk_rng file and returns a webpage that allows you to download the file, create a moments or velocity distribution plots, or backup to select a different plot option or a different set of peaks. The peaks you selected are listed at the bottom of this webpage.

If you selected moments, when you press Calculate Moments, the software will create the moments text file and plot and return the gif image on a webpage. If you selected velocity distribution plots, when you press Calculate VDP, you will get a modified version of the Velocity Distribution Custom Plot webpages that let you select the display options you want.