Accepted File Types

As of September 2020, MagPy has been tested with the following file types:

UCLA Flat Files

These are files with an ASCII header file ending in .ffh and a binary data file ending in .ffd.

CDF Files

MagPy has been tested with CDF files from the MMS and Solar Orbiter missions.
Work is being done to extend support for additional epoch types and variable types.
For now, it will load up simple 1-2D time series variables and 2D spectrograms.

MagPy follows the NASA Space Physics Guidelines for reading CDF files.

ASCII Files

ASCII files are readable by MagPy if they are comma or whitespace-delimited files where each record of data is on a separate line and the following conditions are satisfied:

  • The first column must be a timestamp in ISO-8601 format
    • Example of accepted timestamps: 2017-01-01T00:00:00, 2018-02-03T22:00:30.125
  • The first row must indicate the labels for each data column
    • Examples: "Time Bx By Bz", "Timestamp, BX_GSM, BY_GSM, BZ_GSM"

Example

SCET_UTC                MLST         Bx_SC         By_SC        Bz_SC        
2020-08-08T20:21:13.156 605.0000000  -1300.8699951 1400.2609863 -1046.7290039
2020-08-08T20:21:13.656 605.0000000  -1300.8800049 1400.3020020 -1046.7020264
2020-08-08T20:21:14.156 605.0000000  -1300.7979736 1400.2120361 -1046.7220459
2020-08-08T20:21:14.656 605.0000000  -1300.7679443 1400.2149658 -1046.6739502
2020-08-08T20:21:15.156 605.0000000  -1300.8170166 1400.3170166 -1046.6739502
2020-08-08T20:21:15.656 606.0000000  -1300.8609619 1400.2960205 -1046.6600342