Spacecraft Curtain

Spacecraft Curtain hangs a ribbon of the magnetic field under a spacecraft's path, from just above the solar surface up to the probe.

The Spacecraft node fetches Parker Solar Probe's ephemeris (linspace sampling, 48 points over four days around a perihelion), and Spacecraft Read turns it into a path of points. The window is four days rather than longer because the coronal run ends at 30 R_sun and the path must stay inside it (r runs from 11.4 to 29.1 R_sun here). The Curtain node spans each path point radially between its Inner radius (1.01 R_sun; at exactly 1 R_sun the row falls on the grid's lower edge and samples zero vectors, which breaks the logarithmic scale) and the point itself, in 8 radial steps, which makes a ribbon surface that follows the orbit. Sample reads the B Vector Field group's field onto that surface, and the Plot colors it by the field magnitude on a logarithmic scale. A second Plot draws the path itself as a yellow tube.

The path is fetched from JPL Horizons the first time the graph is evaluated, so that run needs a network connection; later runs use the cached copy. Change the spacecraft or the window on the Spacecraft node, or raise Inner radius to shorten the ribbon.

Built from: Groups ▸ Stock ▸ Fields ▸ B Vector Field and Groups ▸ Stock ▸ Spacecraft ▸ Ephemeris.

This template is in the library on this site but does not ship with PVA. Download Spacecraft Curtain.pyv and choose File ▸ Open Session…, or put it in the templates folder of the PVA home to list it under File ▸ New from Template ▸ Saved. File ▸ Browse Templates… opens this site. See Templates.