Introduction#

The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) [Pesnell et al., 2012] is a NASA satellite which has been continuously observing the Sun since 2010.

This library uses the sunpy package to download SDO images and the aiapy package to align and prepare the images to be ready for scientific analysis.

While this package uses Sunpy to download the data, it does not represent SDO images as instances of sunpy.map.Map it represents images using named_arrays.FunctionArray.

Installation#

This package is published to PyPI and can be installed using pip.

pip install solar-dynamics-observatory

API Reference#

sdo

Download and analyze SDO observations.

Examples#

Download and display an AIA image

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import astropy.units as u
import astropy.visualization
import named_arrays as na
import sdo

# Download some images from JSOC and load into memory
images = sdo.aia.open("2019-09-30T00:00")

# Select one of the images to plot
index = {images.axis_time: 0, images.axis_wavelength: 0}

# Plot the image
with astropy.visualization.quantity_support():
    fig, ax = plt.subplots()
    na.plt.pcolormesh(
        images.inputs.position[index],
        C=images.outputs.value[index],
        vmin=0,
        vmax=images.outputs.value.percentile(99.9),
        ax=ax,
    )
    ax.set_aspect("equal")

Download and display an HMI magnetogram

# Download the magnetogram closest to the given time
magnetogram = sdo.hmi.open("2024-05-10T18:00")

index = {magnetogram.axis_time: 0}

# Plot the line-of-sight magnetic field, saturated well below the
# strongest fields so that the quiet Sun is visible at all
with astropy.visualization.quantity_support():
    fig, ax = plt.subplots()
    na.plt.pcolormesh(
        magnetogram.inputs.position[index],
        C=magnetogram.outputs.value[index],
        cmap="gray",
        vmin=-100,
        vmax=+100,
        ax=ax,
    )
    ax.set_aspect("equal")

Tutorials#

Invert AIA images for a DEM

Citation#

If you use sdo in your research, please cite it. The citation metadata is kept in CITATION.cff, which the “Cite this repository” button on the GitHub page can export as BibTeX or APA.

Every release of sdo is archived on Zenodo with its own DOI. The concept DOI, 10.5281/zenodo.23093186, always resolves to the latest version, and the Zenodo page lists the DOI of every version. Please include the version of sdo that you used, which is given by importlib.metadata.version("solar-dynamics-observatory"). The BibTeX entry below uses the concept DOI. To cite a specific version instead, replace doi with the DOI of that version.

@software{solar-dynamics-observatory,
  author = {Smart, Roy T. and Parker, Jacob D.},
  title = {solar-dynamics-observatory},
  version = {X.Y.Z},
  doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23093186},
  url = {https://github.com/sun-data/solar-dynamics-observatory},
}

Bibliography#

[1]

Will Barnes, David Stansby, Nick Murphy, Jeffrey Reep, Stuart Mumford, Nabil Freij, and Laura Hayes. fiasco v0.8.2. 2026. URL: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21716503, doi:10.5281/zenodo.21716503.

[2]

Paul Boerner, Christopher Edwards, James Lemen, and others. Initial Calibration of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Solar Physics, 275(1-2):41–66, 2012. doi:10.1007/s11207-011-9804-8.

[3]

R. P. Dufresne, G. Del Zanna, P. R. Young, K. P. Dere, E. Deliporanidou, W. T. Barnes, and E. Landi. CHIANTI—An Atomic Database for Emission Lines. Paper XVIII. Version 11, Advanced Ionization Equilibrium Models: Density and Charge Transfer Effects. The Astrophysical Journal, 2024. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ad6765.

[4]

James R. Lemen, Alan M. Title, David J. Akin, and others. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Solar Physics, 275(1-2):17–40, 2012. doi:10.1007/s11207-011-9776-8.

[5]

J. K. Lepson, P. Beiersdorfer, G. V. Brown, and D. A. Liedahl. Emission Lines of Fe XIV, Fe XV, and Fe XVI in the Extreme Ultraviolet Region 40–100 Å. The Astrophysical Journal, 2023. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/acbc17.

[6]

W. Dean Pesnell, B. J. Thompson, and P. C. Chamberlin. The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). \solphys , 275(1-2):3–15, January 2012. doi:10.1007/s11207-011-9841-3.

[7]

Joseph Plowman and Amir Caspi. A Fast, Simple, Robust Algorithm for Coronal Temperature Reconstruction. The Astrophysical Journal, 905(1):17, 2020. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/abc260.