ESA's SOHO Archive is now online

The SOHO science archive is the first in a series of new generation scientific archives being developed and implemented by the Science Archives and Virtual Observatory Team at the European Space Astronomy Centre in Spain.

These archives will contribute to preserving the legacy of ESA's science missions by conserving and providing access to data from all of these missions.

Access to data from the ESA-NASA SOHO mission has just become easier with the launch of a new SOHO science archive with enhanced capabilities for searching and visualising the vast SOHO data archive. This is the first in a new generation of science archives under development at ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre.

Since operations began in 1995 the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has been transmitting data from its twelve scientific instruments back to Earth at a rate of 1 Gigabyte per day.

Analysis of this data has resulted in ground-breaking scientific results which have included the first images of a star's convection zone and the structure of sunspots below the photosphere; the most precise measurements of the temperature structure, interior rotation, and gas flow in the solar interior; the discovery of new dynamic phenomena such as coronal waves and solar tornadoes, and the discovery of more than 1600 comets.

The recently launched ESA SOHO Science Archive allows for seamless access to the complete archive of science data sets from the 12 instruments as soon as the data are processed.