JHelioviewer 2.2.1

JHelioviewer is a visualization software developed by the European Space Agency. The program enables users to view high-resolution images of the sun almost in real time. The program also allows users to create movies from the images, tracking the changes in the sun’s surface. It is a program designed to complement the ESA/NASA Helioviewer Project. The program provides access to more than a million images of the Sun, spanning the last couple of decades. The Solar Dynamics Observatory of NASA adds new images at certain intervals in the day, every day.

JHelioviewer enables users to create movies to show the progression in any specific area on the surface of the sun. Users can set the movie duration from 1 hour as the minimum, to 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours, 1 day, 2 days, 1 week, and 28 days, at the maximum. The user interface features a window divided into three panels. The left panel enables users to look for images according to the date, time, and time-step. The Images box displays the name, time and date stamp of the current image loaded on the display window. The Solar Features and Events checkboxes enable users to see whether there are active regions on the current view, along with other features including coronal cavities, dimmings, and waves, solar flares, and sunspots, among others. The display window features the latest image of the sun, with a zoom in or out slider at the left. The lower left part displays an image of the earth, as a scale to the sun’s image.