Starting Sunday, March 8, 2026 helioviewer.org and other Helioviewer Project services will be brought down to accommodate a scheduled transition to a new location. Users should expect outages and intermittent availability of helioviewer.org and other Helioviewer Project services for several days.

During this period users should expect the following:

• helioviewer.org will be temporarily unavailable
• JHelioviewer users may not be able to load data from GSFC
• Helioviewer API and other services will be temporarily interrupted

You may use the Helioviewer instance at IAS during the maintenance window.

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience during this planned downtime.

During this maintenance period you can expect the following:

• helioviewer.org may be temporarily unavailable
• JHelioviewer users may not be able to load data from GSFC
• Helioviewer API and other services may be temporarily interrupted

This maintenance is necessary to transfer some infrastructure components to improve service reliability and performance.

You may use the Helioviewer instance at IAS during the maintenance window.

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience during this planned downtime.

3D Visualization Capabilities

The new 3D mode allows users to view solar imagery in a three-dimensional space, fully taking into account the location of the instrument in space when the data was taken. We can now correctly overlay image data from spacecraft such as STEREO and Solar Orbiter. This implementation builds on testing and comparison with the established JHelioviewer application’s 3D capabilities.

Current Functionality

In this initial release of 3D mode, users can:

• View solar imagery in a 3D environment
• Adjust viewing angles to observe solar features from different perspectives
• Examine spatial relationships of solar phenomena

The current 3D implementation has some limitations compared to the standard 2D view. The following features are not available in the 3D viewport at this time:

• Display of features & events
• Screenshot functionality
• Movie creation

These functions continue to work in the standard 2D mode as development continues on the 3D environment.

Accessing 3D Mode

Users will find a “3D View” option in the upper left of the Helioviewer.org interface. Selecting this option switches from the standard 2D view to the 3D environment. Users can toggle between modes as needed.

Development Roadmap

Work continues on expanding the capabilities of the 3D mode, with future updates planned to incorporate the additional functionality currently only available in 2D mode.

Feedback

User feedback on this new feature will help guide future development. We welcome observations and suggestions as users explore the new capabilities. You can reach the team at HelioviewerDevelopment@nasa.onmicrosoft.com

This message was posted on suntoday.lmsal.com on 2024-11-28.

We appreciate your understanding and patience while we addressed these issues. If you encounter any further issues or have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us from github.com/helioviewer/issues

Unfortunately, as a result of these issues, the ability to generate movies and take screenshots will be temporarily disabled. We are actively working on resolving these challenges, and we anticipate that these features will be back online by August 12th.

Helioviewer was updated to version 4.4.0 on July 15, 2024.

New Data Sources

The browsing of hard X-ray data from the Sun through the Helioviewer.org interface is now available.

RHESSI - hard X-ray images and the full flare list.

The Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) was launched on February 2nd, 2002 and took data until July 20th, 2018. It observed the whole Sun in high energy X-rays. These are commonly produced during solar flares and their analysis provides information on particle acceleration on the Sun at solar flare sites. The images displayed by Helioviewer show the emission in different energy bands denoted in kilo-electron volts (keV). Users can also select images based on different image reconstruction methods. The images here are the same as those held by the RHESSI Flare Image Archive. We would like to thank the RHESSI team for their help in making RHESSI flare images and data available via Helioviewer.

When viewing RHESSI data, the RHESSI section under Features and Events can be used to get more information about the observed flare.

Selecting the flare pin will reveal the flare’s event information.

Selecting Full analysis will take you to that flare’s analysis page within the RHESSI Image Archive.

New Features

These new features now improve the sharing and browsing capabilities of Helioviewer.org.

New Permanent Sharing URLs

Viewport sharing has been available in Helioviewer for some time, however previous short links were temporary. The new sharing links are permanent links to the current viewport. These links will load Helioviewer with the same observation time, images, and event selections that were present when the link was created.

Image Date Warning

When the observation date and the timestamp of the nearest image available for that observation date are more than 12 hours apart, a warning will appear. Helioviewer always shows the nearest available image, even if that image happens to be years away, which can cause some confusion when overlaying multiple data sources.

Previously, the only indicator for this is the image date turning red in the sidebar. Now it also comes with a warning that you may use to update the observation time, if desired.

Individual Event Selection

Individual events can now be shown or hidden, instead of only being able to control groups of events. This also applies to any screenshots and movies that you make.

Jump to next image

Navigating a specific set of images is now easier by using new buttons which update the observation time to the timestamp of the next (or previous) image in the selected data source. Using the buttons, you can update the image to the next image for that data source.

Helioviewer as been updated to version 4.4.0. Another announcement highlighting new features will follow later this week.

For a full list of what’s new, you can view the full changelogs for the API and Website

If you observe any issues, please create an issue on our issue tracker on Github or email us at helioviewerdevelopment@nasa.onmicrosoft.com

The data center managed by Lockheed Martin Solar & Astrophysics Lab (LMSAL) will be offline between June 28, 5:00pm Pacific Time to late night June 29.

Helioviewer pulls SDO data from LMSAL so the latest SDO data will not be available during this time. There will be a gap in the data after the data center comes back online which will be filled in next week.

helioviewer.org will be undergoing scheduled maintenance on Monday July 15 from 9:00am - 2:00pm US/Eastern time.

During this time you can expect the following:

• helioviewer.org may appear to load, but not function properly
• JHelioviewer users may not be able to load data from GSFC

You may use the Helioviewer mirror at IAS