Data Release 10

PSP/FIELDS Data Release 10 includes survey and select data from Encounter 9 (perihelion August 2021).

Antenna tests

During PSP Encounters 7 and 8, intervals where the FIELDS antennas were driven towards the power supply rails were observed. These intervals were discussed in the previous release notes.

In early July 2021, updated antenna biasing commands were sent to the instrument, preventing the antennas from being driven to the rails. During Encounter 9, the “antennas at the rails” condition did not occur.

Outside of Encounter, for several intervals on July 7, July 14, and August 18, commands were sent to the instrument to test effects of the bias configuration on the antenna response. These intervals are flagged in the Level 2 data, with both the “High frequency noise” and “Antennas driven to the rails” data flags (flag values 256 and 512).

Level 3 SQTN data

Level 3 Simplified Quasi-Thermal Noise (SQTN) data is available for Encounters 1-7:

https://research.ssl.berkeley.edu/data/psp/data/sci/fields/l3/sqtn_rfs_V1V2/

SQTN spectroscopy is a method which allows deduction of the electron density and the core temperature of the plasma surrounding a spacecraft, using the power spectra acquired from an electric dipole antenna. The SQTN technique and its application to PSP data are described in Moncuquet et al. (2021):

https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/ab5a84

The files on the FIELDS server are derived from files publicly available at the Centre de Données de la Physique des Plasmas (CDPP) Data Archive: https://cdpp.eu.