About the Platform

The UCalgary SRS Open Science Platform provides open access to data collected by ground-based instrument networks operated by the University of Calgary's Space Remote Sensing Lab. The platform includes an open data archive, software libraries for working with the data, and visualizations to support the exploration of the data archive.

The platform serves the international space science community by making data freely available and providing the tools needed to use it to advance science. We presently have more than a petabyte of data, and produce 100 terabytes of new data per year. The instruments and data provided by the platform have been used in hundreds of peer-reviewed publications over several decades, and are included in at least 100 presentations per year.

Space science research at the University of Calgary dates back to the founding of the Department of Physics in 1963. In the 1960s, Dr. Cliff Anger led the team that developed the auroral photometer that launched in 1969 aboard the Canadian satellite ISIS II, and that produced the first truly global images of the aurora. Today, the Space Remote Sensing group - led by Emma Spanswick and Eric Donovan - operates a network of 100+ instruments across 25+ sites spanning Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and Antarctica. The ground-based instrument arrays have grown through several major projects over the decades:

1978, 1986

Fairchild CCD, CANOPUS

Early auroral imaging with Fairchild CCD cameras and the Canadian Auroral Network for the OPEN Program Unified Study (CANOPUS) - a network of magnetometers, meridian scanning photometers, riometers, and all-sky cameras across the Canadian prairies and north.

2001

NORSTAR

The NORthern Solar Terrestrial ARray - an optical and radio facility for remotely sensing auroral precipitation on a continental scale, operating all-sky imagers, meridian scanning photometers, and riometers.

2002

THEMIS ASI

Network of 20 all-sky imager cameras deployed across North America as part of the NASA THEMIS mission, creating the first continent-wide auroral imaging network.

2004

CGSM

Canadian GeoSpace Monitoring program established, deploying riometers and colour all-sky imagers across Canada for continuous monitoring of the space environment.

2009

RISR-C + REGO

Canada Foundation for Innovation funding for the Resolute Bay Incoherent Scatter Radar - Canada and the Redline Emission Geospace Observatory, adding 10 redline all-sky imagers across the Canadian North.

2016

TREx

Canada Foundation for Innovation funding for the Transition Region Explorer - deploying multispectral imagers, imaging riometers, and GNSS receivers across Western Canada.

2020

SWAN

Canada Foundation for Innovation funding for the Space Weather Adaptive Network - deploying 20+ hyper spectral riometers across Canada.

2023

SMILE-ASI

20+ Full-colour All-sky Imager network deployed as a Canadian contribution to the joint ESA-CAS Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) mission.

2024

GDC-G

Canada Foundation for Innovation funding to develop and deploy new ground-based systems that complement the NASA GDC mission.