As described above, analysed data can be produced in one of two formats. The data either emerge as matlab-format files (from GUISDAP) or as binary files in "RAL NCAR" (rslt) format (from the RAL Analysis Program or Powerprofile). RAL supports software utilities to visualise the data in either of these formats, as well as software to convert analysed data from matlab format to rslt format.
Visualising Analysed Data in MATLAB format
gp
The main program for visualising matlab-format analysed data is gp, a matlab program developed in Japan as a general purpose tool for EISCAT data visualisation. The program takes as input a directory of matlab-format analysed data files such as might exist, for example, in a GUISDAP result path.
On eiscatd and older machines, the program can be started by including the directory /home/common/matlab/gp in your matlab path, entering matlab and typing gpcontrol. On the clustered machines, gp can be run as /soft/eiscat/share/gp from the unix command line.
When gp starts, a small control window appears with the message "No data source defined". The data source can be defined by pulling down the "Select" menu, and choosing the "GUISDAP result directory" option. The GUI that then appears can be used to choose the directory containing the files to be plotted. When that has been done successfully, the message in the control window changes to show the name of the selected data directory and the start and end times of the files it contains. A graphics pull-down menu also appears.
In the graphics menu, choose the "Plot Overview" option. A window showing the default start- and end-times for the plot appears. Note that this can be changed if it is not desired to show the whole data period. Clicking "OK" in this window will cause the data to be read in. A plot may then be produced. Alternatively, the data interval may contain more than one pointing direction, in which case a further window will appear asking whether the user wishes to display data from all the available pointing directions or just a subset, which the user can define. After making this choice, the plot should appear.
Once the plot has appeared, further functions in the "Graphics" menu can be used to adjust the limits of the colour axes etc. Child plots e.g. separate plots of plasma parameter profiles or time series can be produced using the "Child Plots" function. Each sub-plot contains a "File" menu, in which users can find a "Print" option that can be used to produce hardcopy output.
The gp program has lots of other nice functionality, which users can explore by testing the performance of the various menus.
Visualising Analysed Data in RAL NCAR (rslt) Format
Panels
The panels program is a matlab-based program written at RAL to plot multi-panel data from analysed data files in rslt format, i.e. those produced by the RAL Analysis Program or Powerprofile, or produced from GUISDAP output and converted using the g2n program (see Section 12). The program is run from the unix command line. Typing:
panels -h
shows the possible command line arguments that are supported. The possibilities are:
-H {height minimum} -H (height maximum} (this pair must appear together, if at all)
-t {start time} -t {end time} (this pair must appear together, if at all)
-T {title of plot}
-x {x-axis parameter}
-y {y-axis parameter}
-z {z-axis parameter}
Multiple z-axis parameters can be specified, depending on the number of parameters needed in the plot. The last command line argument is required to be the name of the data file to be plotted.
By default, the plotting is done from the first to the last time in the data file, with the y-axis parameter as altitude and the x-axis parameter as time. e.g. panels -z NE -z TE -z TI -z VEL test.rslt
This will produce a four panel summary plot showing electron density, electron temperature, ion temperature and line-of-sight ion velocity against height and time from the file test.rslt. The y-axis will be altitude, the x-axis will be time in UT, and the plot will have a default title (derived from the filename and start/end times).
To achieve more control over the plotting, e.g. by changing the z-axis limits, users can easily copy and edit their own versions of the program, as it is short and relatively simple. See for instance, the program /home/eiscat/ian/matlab/plotting/cmp.m, which is a modified version of panels, or the version specially modified for the plotting of power profiles in /home/eiscat/ian/matlab/plotting/pp_panels.m.
adv
For users preferring to work in idl, an idl-based visualisation program for rslt format files called adv exists on the older eiscat machines (i.e. not on the clustered machines). The program can be run by typing adv (if users have /home/soft1 in their path), which produces a GUI asking how many windows are required. Once some number (usually 1) is chosen, a plotting window appears in which users can define the location and name of the desired file. Once the file has been specified a "Plot Type" (most commonly "Panel") can be chosen, whereupon a window appears allowing the user to specify the y- and z-parameters. The start and end time of the data sequence, a tolerance to be applied to the pointing direction (one plot is produced per pointing direction encountered) and the experiment and site names can also be specified. Once the plot has been specified, clicking the "Done" button and then the "Plot" button in the original GUI will make the plot appear. Output such as postscript can be produced by using the "Output" menu in the data-plot window.
Note that only single-panel output can be produced by adv. However, it is fairly straightforward to produce several postscript files from this program and to combine them subsequently into a single plot using some other software facility, such as latex.
The adv program is extensively documented at www.eiscat.rl.ac.uk/adv_userguide.