Input file Formatting Conventions
| Input file Formatting Conventions |
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GX_Simulator expects from a 3D magnetic field model IDL sav file to contain a structure variable describing the model. The name of the variable is arbitrary, but the mandatory and optional tag must follow a strict naming convention used to recognize one o the pedefined Magnetic Field Model Types .
An IDL HELP command applied on such structure variable would produce an output like this :
IDL> help,box,/str ** Structure <14e8baa0>, 7 tags, length=6377324, data length=6377324, refs=1: BX FLOAT Array[81, 81, 81] BY FLOAT Array[81, 81, 81] BZ FLOAT Array[81, 81, 81] LAT FLOAT 1.99537 LON FLOAT -16.1987 DR FLOAT Array[3] DATE STRING '20070518_060620'
Bx, By, Bz: a set of 3D arrays describing the local cartesian components at each grid point of the data cube model. The local system of coordinates is assumed to originate on the solar surface at the point corresponding to the center of the data cube base and having the OX and OY axis tangent to the solar surface and oriented in the West and North direction of the heliocentric coordinate system, while the OZ direction is given by the local solar radius. If not provided, a dialog message is displayed and the importing action is canceled.
NOTE: If preferred, the mandatory tags Bx, By and Bz may be replaced by an alternative Bcube tag that is expected to be a 4D array with its fourth dimension used for indexing the cartesian components of the magnetic model.
dr: a scalar or a three dimensional vector describing the spatial resolution of the data cube expressed in units of solar radius R. If not provided, a standard 2" MDI magnetogram resolution is assumed.
LON, LAT: the latitude and longitude heliospheric coordinates, expressed in degrees, corresponding to the center of the data cube base. If not provided, [0, 0] is assumed.
DATE: A string describing the time and date formatted according to any standard time format accepted by the SSW anytim routine. If not provided, the today date is assumed.
Any stand-alone variables present in the data file structure tags that do not correspond to any of the predefined Magnetic Field Model Types are quietly ignored by GX_Simulator.