EVE MEGS-A and SAM have been Turned Off

I am very sad to say that SDO has decided to turn off EVE MEGS-A and EVE SAM. The EVE MEGS-A/SAM instrument has had a failure in the CCD electronics. The EVE team is looking at ways to start them again, but we do not have a date for restarting the instruments.

The discovery of late-phase flares depended on the linking of MEGS-A spectra and AIA images. The SAM images were made by a pinhole camera, but had a remarkable accuracy in determining the location of flares.

MEGS-B, MEGS-P, and ESP are working as designed.

This letter from Tom Woods, the EVE PI, was sent out yesterday.

Hi EVE team,

We're sad to report that EVE MEGS-A / SAM data stream has ended on Monday May 26, 2014 due to a power anomaly for MEGS-A CCD electronics. With the SAM images being from MEGS-A CCD, both SAM solar X-ray images and MEGS-A spectra (6-37 nm) are not available now. The MEGS-A and SAM data from May 1, 2010 to May 26, 2014 will remain available from the EVE web site ( http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/eve/ ).

All the other EVE instruments are working well, ESP, MEGS-B, and MEGS-P. We¹ll be working with the EVE science team to optimize the EVE observations with those instruments.

X-class Solar Flares from Space and the Ground!

Wondering what else we need to know to understand X-class solar flares? Join SDO and others on a Google+ Hangout today at 2:30 pm ET. We will describe an X1 flare that happened 29-Mar-2014. It was the first X flare observed by IRIS and was also seen by SDO, SoHO, Hinode, RHESSI, and the Dunn Solar Telescope in New Mexico. When IRIS watches a solar flare it can measure how fast the plasma is moving, a huge clue to how flares work. This flare produced a nice coronal dimming going over the pole that was described in an earlier blog post.

The Hangout URL is: https://plus.google.com/events/c99gnf2e4l9vb4n6logpsemkhlo, staring at 2:30 pm ET and going aboit an hour.

CNN featured a picture of the March 29 flare in Pictures of the Week!