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The SWELTO portal for Space Weather is now operating in real time

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The portal of the SWELTO project is now operating and distributing in real-time the first “products” for future Space Weather applications. SWELTO (Space Weather Lab in Turin Observatory) aims to develop and test new diagnostic tools for analyzing space-based data providing real-time information on current conditions on the Sun and in the interplanetary space (https://www.oato.inaf.it/portfolio-items/swelto/).

Fig. 1: a screenshot from the SWELTO portal distributing real-time results from data analysis.

During the project, new sensors will also be installed at Turin Observatory for the detection of ionospheric disturbances (with a SID monitor) and geomagnetic field disturbances (with a fluxgate magnetometer), now under calibration. Finally, through SWELTO other projects will be involved (such as PRISMA, SAMADHA, or others) that can provide through their sensors other context information related to space weather events.

Now, after more than two years of development, the SWELTO portal (http://swelto.oato.inaf.it/) is able to provide the following products in real time:

  • “SunNow”: series of movies showing the evolution of the solar corona (inner corona in the EUV, and intermediate corona in VL) as observed from space along the Sun-Earth line over the last 3 days, up to the latest data currently available from the SOHO and SDO missions;
  • “CorDens”: current distribution of the electron density in the intermediate corona as determined from coronographic images of the SOHO/LASCO instrument;
  • “WindSpeed”: current distribution of the solar wind expansion velocity measured by the coronographic image sequences acquired by the SOHO/LASCO instrument (still under test);
  • “ParkerSpiral”: current distributions of density and outflow speed of interplanetary plasma from 0.1 to 1.1 AU on the ecliptic plane as determined by a MHD numerical simulation constrained to the in situ measurements from ACE;
  • “InSitu”: evolution during the last solar rotation (about 27 days) of the conditions of the interplanetary plasma (density, speed, temperature) measured in situ at the Lagrangian point L1 by ACE.

Other modules that will provide other products in real time (such as the occurrence of solar flares or eruptions, or the distribution on the solar disk of regions potentially of interest for space weather) will be activated in the next developments of the project.

SWELTO is a “think tank” where new data analysis methods, numerical models, measurements, and ideas of interest for Space Weather are developed and tested. The project is currently fully supported by the INAF-Turin Observatory.

For more information please contact alessandro.bemporad@inaf.it or download the technical note describing the project in details (https://openaccess.inaf.it/handle/20.500.12386/27715).