3D visualization of solar wind ion data from the Chang'E-1 exploration

Abstract

Chang'E-1 (abbreviation CE-1), China's first Moon-orbiting spacecraft launched in 2007, carried equipment called the Solar Wind Ion Detector (abbreviation SWID), which sent back tens of gigabytes of solar wind ion differential number flux data. These data are essential for furthering our understanding of the cislunar space environment. However, to fully comprehend and analyze these data presents considerable difficulties, not only because of their huge size (57 GB), but also because of their complexity. Therefore, a new 3D visualization method is developed to give a more intuitive representation than traditional 1D and 2D visualizations, and in particular to offer a better indication of the direction of the incident ion differential number flux and the relative spatial position of CE-1 with respect to the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon. First, a coordinate system named Selenocentric Solar Ecliptic (SSE) which is more suitable for our goal is chosen, and solar wind ion differential number flux vectors in SSE are calculated from Geocentric Solar Ecliptic System (GSE) and Moon Center Coordinate (MCC) coordinates of the spacecraft, and then the ion differential number flux distribution in SSE is visualized in 3D space. This visualization method is integrated into an interactive visualization analysis software tool named vtSWIDs, developed in MATLAB, which enables researchers to browse through numerous records and manipulate the visualization results in real time. The tool also provides some useful statistical analysis functions, and can be easily expanded.