The high temporal cadency study of the plasma and radio waves associated with interplanetary shocks is an important science goal for RPW. In the early phase of the mission, when the telemetry allocation for the instrument was still 5 kbps, it was decided to implement a shock detection algorithm. The aim was to fill the burst mode data allocation with events that were clearly detected as shock and not only with randomly selected burst data. The automatic detection algorithm used by RPW is described in this document.

The automatic detection algorithm for shock is producing the so-called SBM1 data for Selected Burst Mode 1.

Catalog of potential interesting in situ shocks detected by RPW

The tool SISSI allows everyone (now, SISSI is only available for LDAP users but will be made public soon) to see the automatic detections run on-board RPW. The in-situ shocks have SBM1 as type.

The detections in SISSI table might not be real shocks. A pre-selection is performed by Olga Alexandrova (LIRA, Paris Observatory). Each event is classified as :

• slow or fast shock,
• pressure balance,
• interesting events,
• nothing.

Please be aware that this classification is not absolute and may contain errors.

User can also check in SISSI if high cadency data from a given event have been retrieved on ground.

By clicking on the event number, a technical plot is displayed showing magnetic field, proton density and velocity among the event.

If you have any questions about classification or detection, please contact Olga Alexandrova or Diane Bérard (see Contact us)

Where to find high cadency data for those events

To get data when retrieved on ground (see SISSI to check the availability of data on ground), please visit Download data.

You can also display data using summary plots prepared by RPW teams in Display data. Select SBM1 type of data in form.