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RHESSI Data Access

RHESSI (Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager) was launched on 5 February 2002 with the aim of obtaining high resolution imaging and spectroscopy of solar flares from 3 keV X-rays to 17 MeV gamma rays, with high time resolution.

Accessing data from the Glasgow RHESSI archive via AstroGrid

Observing summary data

RHESSI observing summary files provide count-rates pre-binned to coarse energy and time resolution, and observing flags. A database of observing summary information was created by the solar group at Glasgow University by importing data from the RHESSI observing summary files (e.g. hsi_obssumm_20030224_040.fits), to allow immediate visualisation of the summary data. For a detailed description of observing summary data follow this link.

Example queries

Here are examples of ADQL queries to the observing summaries database:

  Select * from rhessi as a where a.time_start > '2004-10-13T00:00:00' and a.time_start < '2004-10-13T12:00:00'

The query above is the basic time range query.

How to send a query to the observing summary database

The RHESSI observing summary database can be accessed via VODesktop.

• Follow this link for help in downloading and running up VODesktop.
• Start a VOExplorer session, double click on Example Lists, then click on Solar services.
• On the list that appears on the rhs, click on Glasgow RHESSI DSA Service. Now, under Actions, click on Build ADQL. This will take you to the Query Builder.
• Once the Query Builder appears, you can type in your query as a string. You can select the table to query on from the drop-down box next to Table. After typing in your query, click on Validate Edit: this will check that the syntax of your query is correct and will report any errors in the Diagnostics box.
• To submit the query click on Execute.

Note: to be able to get back a large result file (eg when you want to look at a long time range), you need to save the output to a file in VOSpace, rather than use the Store in Cache option as in the screenshot above.

To store the query result in VOSpace, under Outputs, click on this icon: and point to the file in your VO Workspace where you want to save the file. You can overwrite an existing file or type in the name of a new one.

To view the results launch Topcat (see Helper Applications). Then click on the result file and from the Result menu of Task Runner choose Attempt to send table to Topcat.

The image below is a plot made with Topcat showing the results of an observing summary query.