See http://sec.noaa.gov/Data/ for tables of all online data 
  at SEC, including links to non-SEC sources for older data.

==================================================================
March 22, 2003

                     GOES Satellite Change
On April 8, SEC will begin using data from the GOES 12 satellite, 
and stop receiving GOES 8 data. GOES12 data lists will begin April 1. 

See http://www.sec.noaa.gov/GOES.html for complete details.


Beginning April 3rd 2003, GOES 10 will be SEC's primary GOES satellite
for energetic particle measurements. This includes all of the GOES
electron, proton, and alpha particle data. Due to a recent failure of 
the P6 and P7 proton channels on GOES 12, there currently is no secondary 
source for these data.

Users should be aware that GOES 10 data differ somewhat from GOES 8 data
in two ways. First, the energetic particle detectors that are used for our 
operational products have a westward look direction on GOES 8 as opposed to 
an eastward look direction on GOES 10. Because of the different look 
directions, the flux measurements can differ during energetic particle 
events. The general flux profiles throughout particle events are similar in 
the GOES 8 and GOES 10 measurements; however, the GOES 10 measurements on
average tend to show somewhat lower flux levels. For the largest events, 
the event starting times, peak flux levels, and times of the peak fluxes 
are similar.

The electron measurements also differ somewhat between GOES 8 and GOES 10. 
This difference is due to the different geomagnetic latitudes of the two 
spacecraft. Both GOES 8 and GOES 10 are located on the geographic equator, 
but due to the tilt of Earth's dipole magnetic field, GOES 10 (at 135 degrees 
west longitude) is at a lower geomagnetic latitude than GOES 8 (at 75 degrees 
west longitude). Because of the different geomagnetic latitudes, GOES 10 on 
average measures a slightly larger electron flux than GOES 8. The relative 
variations in flux from time to time are roughly similar at the two spacecraft 
locations.

===============================================================
GOES 5-minute energetic particle and electron data lists update 
every 5 minutes.

The file format follows the SEC data list convention where
header lines start with either # or :. 

The daily files are named with the UT day of the data and
the GOES spacecraft identification number. G8 for GOES-8
(the primary SEC GOES spacecraft) and G10 for GOES-10. 

The files with no date always contain data for the last 
2-hours. Users retrieving data frequently can copy these 
shorter files.





Your comments and suggestions are welcome. 
Thank you,

 Viola.J.Raben@noaa.gov