NOAA region 2673, 4 to 15 September 2017. A replay of what the public record says about one solar radiation storm for a crew beyond low Earth orbit, a polar flight and a power grid. A past observation, not a forecast.
Open an audience card, tap the capsule, the aircraft or the grid in the picture, or press play and watch the rings follow the real data
n/aReplay time, UTC
n/a≥10 MeV protons, pfu
n/a>100 MeV protons, pfu
n/aCRaTER dose rate on LRO, µGy/h
Illustrative drawing, real values: the proton stream follows the real flux; the capsule, aircraft and surface each glow only with their own ring. Rings: crew and polar fill with log₁₀ of the real GOES-13 flux against the published threshold (marker). The grid ring is a different kind: the 11-day window as a dial; band = issued K≥7 warning valid period, ticks = issued K≥7 alerts, dot = replay time. Not observed K. Dose is on its own axis, in no ring.
n/a
Past observation · UTC · log axes
Timeline
RealBoth GOES-13 channels share one axis because they share a unit. The CRaTER dose rate has its own axis and is never merged with flux. Gaps are samples with a quality flag or no value; they are not zero. No error bars: the files publish none.
n/a
n/a≥10 MeV pfu
n/a>100 MeV pfu
n/aµGy/h (LRO, CRaTER)
GOES-13 integral proton flux, p/(cm² s sr) read as pfu · log axis
CRaTER-D1D2 dose rate on LRO in lunar orbit, µGy/hour · its own log axis
Threshold written on each SWPC proton alert, pfu · a threshold, not flux
Geomagnetic: issued K≥7 alerts (ticks) and warning valid periods (bars, not observed K)
≥10 MeV>100 MeVCRaTER dose ratereplay time
Hover or drag to read values at a time; dragging pauses the replay. GOES-13 is geostationary. Dose is measured by CRaTER on LRO in lunar orbit, not at flight altitude, in a crew vehicle or on the ground, and is not derived from the flux. Dashed lines are published thresholds, not rules.
Issued products · copied from the PRF PDFs
Alert ledger
IssuedThese are products NOAA SWPC issued, not measurements. The pfu on a proton alert is the threshold written on that alert, not the flux. A warning's valid period is not observed K. Times are the event times written in the product, in UTC.
Swipe the tables sideways for all columns →
Proton alerts
Kind
Channel and threshold
Start
End
Product
Source file
Geomagnetic K alerts, K ≥ 7 (issued at the time written)
Kind
K
Time
Product
Source file
Geomagnetic warnings, K ≥ 7 (valid period, not observed K)
Kind
K
Valid from
Valid to
Hours valid
Product
Source file
Pull-up layer
Method and sources
Real, copied and illustrative
Real · flux, alerts, dose
GOES-13 flux samples, the SWPC alerts and warnings, and the CRaTER dose rate are read from the archived files below by the repository's own code and exported unchanged. Samples with a non-zero quality flag or no value are gaps.
Real · hours, first and last, peaks
Counted from the exported series at 5-minute samples: “at or above” the published threshold. First to last is a span, not a continuous stretch; the number of separate stretches is shown beside it.
Illustrative · hero scene and rings
The three audience rings (crew and polar fill with log₁₀ of the real flux against the published threshold marker; the grid ring is an 11-day dial of issued K≥7 alerts and the warning valid period, not observed K) and the procedural hero scene are drawings with real values: Earth’s limb with a faint power grid, a polar flight arc with an aircraft, a crew capsule far out with the direction of the Sun. The proton stream from the Sun gets denser with log₁₀ of the real ≥10 MeV and >100 MeV flux at the replay time. Each element glows only from its own ring: the capsule from >100 MeV at or above 1 pfu, the aircraft from ≥10 MeV at or above 100 pfu, the surface from issued K≥7 alerts and warnings (one substation lights per issued alert; the band is the warning valid period, not observed K). Positions, shapes, distances and the particles are decoration; it is not an image of radiation, of the magnetosphere or of any flight, vehicle or grid.
Illustrative · replay speed
1× is 3 hours of storm per second, 4× is 12, 16× is 48. The replay loops over the 11 days. No latency is measured: the data are archives.
How to read it
GOES-13 is a geostationary satellite. Its unit, p/(cm² s sr), is read as pfu only to compare with published thresholds. CRaTER flew on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in lunar orbit: its dose rate is not the dose at flight altitude, in a crew vehicle or on the ground, and it is copied from RadLab, not derived from flux. The two are shown side by side only. There are no error bars because none are published in these files. Published scales and definitions are shown with their source; they are not flight rules, aviation limits or grid limits.
The method text from the project
Data files (data/MANIFEST.tsv)
Thresholds and their sources
Code
This project on GitHubSource code, exporter and tests (sighmon/space, space-weather).
Not a forecastOne storm onlyNo combined scoreNo ranking of audiencesNever says “safe”Alert ≠ measurementWarning period ≠ observed KDose not derived from fluxNo error bars inventedScales ≠ rules