LASCO USER HANDBOOK CHAPTER 14

Chapter 14. Sources for Further Information

The best existing publically available technical description of the LASCO instrument is in the proceedings of the First SOHO Workshop: "The Large Angle Spectroscopic Coronagraph (LASCO): Visible LIGHT Coronal Imaging and Spectroscopy," by G.E. Brueckner, R.A. Howard, M.J. Koomen, C. Korendyke, D.J. Michels, D.G. Socker, P. Lamy, A. Llebaria, J. Maucherat, R Schwenn, G.M. Simnett, D.K. Bedford, and C.J. Eyles, in Coronal Streamers, Coronal Loops, and Coronal and Solar Wind Composition (ESA SP-348, 1992), pp. 27-34. This article is now somewhat out of date. An issue of Solar Physics devoted to SOHO has been proposed, similar to the issue on SMM which appeared just before its launch. An updated description of LASCO is being prepared for this occasion.

The most immediately available source of information and updates on LASCO and the SOHO mission is through INTERNET, using the MOSAIC browser. This information is constantly undergoing expansion and update, and is available to a wide audience.

An enormous range of material is potentially available to individuals with access to INTERNET, and tools for searching and recovering information are constantly under development. One of the most useful is MOSAIC, which is a graphical browser used to access information on the World Wide Web (WWW). The basic concepts of the WWW are address protocols which can point to the location of any publically accessable file on any computer on the INTERNET, and hypertext links in recovered data files. These hypertext links are marked keywords in a file which point to further files of potential interest, which can be text, graphics, or even video. A single file can have many hypertext links to other files, each of which itself is linked to further files, and a web of connections is present throughout the WWW. Any desired piece of information (file) is accessable from many different starting points.

MOSAIC is a tool to access information (a browser) on the WWW, using a client-server model. Server software is on any computer offering information. Client software runs on the user's computer to recognize user requests and display the information recovered from the server. The easiest way to learn to use MOSAIC is simply to start. Your home computer must be able to access the INTERNET, support windows, and have installed the MOSAIC client program, which is available for UNIX systems, PC Windows, Macs, and recently for VAX VMS systems. For a UNIX version the user can anonymously ftp a binary executable file from the site ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu, in the directory /Mosaic/Mosaic-binaries/.

The WWW uses a file reference system employing URLs (Uniform Resource Locators). MOSAIC will want a URL from the user, or can access URLs embedded in hypertext links in files which are recovered by the user. However, you don't have to search if you know what you want! Once starting MOSAIC (on a UNIX system probably with "xmosaic &"), select "Open URL" in the File menu, and enter the URL for the LASCO home page: http://lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil/lasco.html Other URLs of interest are the Solar Data Analysis Center (SDAC) at Goddard Space Flight Center: http://umbra.gsfc.nasa.gov This will lead the user to a SOHO home page, which directly is http://umbra.gsfc.nasa.gov/soho/anglais/soho Use of the MOSAIC tool may become in the future, especially after launch of SOHO, the most important source of information available to the general LASCO community.

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