Repairs are Complete and Site is Online

Thanks to Joe Gurman for installing the new RAID and moving the SDO website onto the new drives.
The Sun is looking beautiful today!

SDO Data Site Under Repair, X-flare Erupts

The GSFC SDO website is having a disk replaced and should be back online tomorrow. Many thanks to Joe and Joe for installing the new drives. Repairs at the SDO ground station in New Mexico also delayed delivery of data to the SOCs in Palo Alto and Boulder. Both systems are repaired and delivery of the science data has resumed.

Of course, trouble with the data system means the Sun will do something interesting. An X1.1 flare erupted late yesterday (UT, 7 pm ET). Here is the EVE irradiances showing a peak in the top frame at 2300 UTC. The flare was in AR 11515, very close to the receding limb of the Sun, and in the southern hemisphere.

SDO Anomalies

The SDO RAID is undergoing a disk scan at this time. The web server is offline and will be until the scan completes. We have a new RAID out of the box and configured, so it might be ready to go by tomorrow. With a little luck, we'll be able to rsync it with the old RAID and get things back to normal soon.
Sorry for any inconvenience.

Outages, outages, outages

Power outages caused by inclement inclement weather in the DC area are causing outages of many web servers and data services.  We apologize for any inconvenience. 

[UPDATE:  Power has been restored, but we expect some interruptions in services over the next couple of days as the SDO server undergoes maintenance.]

Computer Scans Occurring - Expect Temporary Outages

Our data server is undergoing scans and maintenance, so users may experience temporary outages and some data flows are being interrupted.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

EVE Rocket Launch scheduled for June 23

The next launch of the EVE underflight calibration sounding rocket payload is planned for June 23, 2012 at 13:00 MDT (window 13:00 - 13:30 MDT) (3:00pm EDT) from the White Sands Missile Range. This flight's primary purpose is to provide the third underflight calibration for the SDO EVE satellite instrument.  Good luck to the EVE time for another successful flight!  [UPDATE:  The launch and recovery went well, and all of the measurements appear to have been successful.  Congratulations!]

 See movies of the last EVE underflight

Where Have All the Sunspots Gone?

It is hard to believe we are in solar maximum when todays' sunspot number is 13 or 14. In this HMI continuum image we can see a tiny active region sitting isolated in the middle of the Sun. If it fades we will have a spotless Sun. The AR doesn't even have a number yet! But as the northern hemisphere fades from maximum, the southern hemisphere has still not reached solar maximum. If you look at an AIA 193 image you can clearly see the polar coronal hole is still open. We are still hopin' for some more fireworks from Solar Cycle 24.