Space Weather

The optional space weather overlay uses data from the US Dept. of Commerce, NOAA, Space Weather Prediction Center; this is accessed via ftp.

Solar Flux

The source of solar flux data is DSD (ftp://ftp.swpc.noaa.gov/pub/latest/DSD.txt).

Geomagnetic (A, K)

The most commonly used source of data is WWV (ftp://ftp.swpc.noaa.gov/pub/latest/wwv.txt) however data for additional sites is available in DGD (ftp://ftp.swpc.noaa.gov/pub/latest/DGD.txt). The sites supported by DGD are:

• Fredericksburg (middle latitude),
• Fairbanks Alaska (high latitude), and
• Planetary where the A value is estimated.

DST

The Dst index represents the longitudinally averaged part of the external field measured at the geomagnetic dipole equator at the surface of the Earth (Sugiura, 1964) and is provided by the World Data Center for Geomagnetism, Kyoto. (Link).

Errors

If the displayed values are shown as - (see image) then either:

• No data is currently available, or
• A firewall is blocking access to the data source.

Check Data

To check that data is available select an entry in the Data section of the Space Weather menu. The text (human readable) files used by this program are shown in your default web browser, the WWV text for Sept. 26, 2018 is shown below.

Firewall

Your firewall must be open, an example of the Windows Defender Firewall entries is shown below.