Wind SWE: Solar Wind Electron Pitch-Angle Distributions at 16 Energy Levels

Wind spacecraft measurements provide electron fluxes sorted into 30 pitch-angle bins relative to the magnetic field at 16 energy levels from about 10 eV to 3 keV. NASA's instrument recorded these 3-second measurements spaced 6 or 12 seconds apart, reporting phase-space density values for each bin and spin-averaged aggregates. The Principal Investigator advises caution and consultation with the SWE science team before publishing interpretations based on this data.

Use Cases

• Modeling solar wind electron anisotropy based on the 30 pitch-angle bins per energy level.
• Analyzing energy-dependent electron pitch-angle distributions across the 16 reported energy channels.
• Studying temporal variations in electron phase-space density using the 6-12 second measurement cadence.
• Comparing spin-averaged electron fluxes with directional distributions for instrument calibration studies.

Strengths

• Provides high-resolution directional data with 30 pitch-angle bins for each of 16 energy levels.
• Reports the exact, time-varying energy value for each observation channel alongside the flux data.
• Includes a spin-averaged value for each energy channel, aggregating data from all pitch-angle bins.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML tasks.
• The PI advises caution and recommends discussion with the science team before publishing results.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Measured by the Wind/SWE electron instrument (VEIS-era mode), with distributions derived from sorting by pitch angle and energy.

Time Range

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Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 03:45:24.345308; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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