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MADRIGAL

Madrigal Database Tutorial

This short tutorial describes how to either get ASCII flat file listings of selected data in a Madrigal database, or how to do global searches of the entire database. As described below, other information and alternate views of the data may also be available.

  1. Go to the Madrigal home page. This page will remain open to use as a guide.
  2. Click on "Access Data"
  3. There are two choices for how to access Madrigal data, depending on whether you want to focus on a single experiment, or whether you want to search the entire local Madrigal database. To perform a global search, select "Global Madrigal Database Report", and read the tutorial located on that page.
  4. To focus on a single experiment at a time, select "Database Inventory Form". Use this form to select a subset of the available experiments. For example, you can choose to view only experiments from a selected period of time, or a particular instrument. You can also chose to view only experiments stored at the Madrigal site you are currently visiting, or a combined inventory of experiments at all Madrigal sites. For example, if you are accessing Madrigal throught the MIT Haystack Observatory Web site, the combined inventory will include experiments stored at the EISCAT and SRI Web sites.
  5. You will get a list of available experiments. Click on the experiment you want.
  6. Next you get a screen for this particular experiment. Depending on the experiment, data files, summary plots and other information may be available. If summary plots are listed (usually the case for Millstone Hill radar data), click on this and you can see some of the data. There are various types. For example, for Millstone Hill data, Local F region data provides profiles of Ne, Te, Ti, and line-of-sight velocity using the zenith antenna. These plots may require further correction or calibration before actual use, but they are good for providing an overview of the ionosphere above the station.
  7. Other information about the experiment may be accessible from the experiment page. There will be a summary of the contents of each data file, and the entire data file can be downloaded if desired. In some cases there may also be one or more links to other Web pages containing information about the experiment.
  8. To get an ASCII flat file of the data, go back to the experiment screen and click on Data Browser (isprint). This produces a form you fill in with your "filters" and with click boxes for the "parameters" you want. With the new version of this web page, these filters and parameters can be saved and reused on other files.
  9. A complete tutorial on the use of this page is available here. As a brief summary, you first set up filters, which are are restrictions on the data to be displayed. For example, setting the pulse length filter to 100 to 500 microseconds would eliminate all data with pulse lengths outside that range.
  10. Next you select the parameters you want to display. Click on the mnemonic to see a full description of each parameter. Commonly required parameters are NEL (log10 electron density), Te and Ti, GDALT (altitude), Click the boxes you want.
  11. Finally select output formatting options.
  12. Now you are ready to list the data. This produces an ascii file which you can download with your browser. As indicated in the warning on the top, you should contact the instrument contact person before using it to make sure of the data quality, including whether all required calibrations have been applied to the data.
Acknowledgment: The original version of this tutorial was written by Michael Buonsanto.

Revised: August 15, 2002
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