On July 23, NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) started releasing real-time operational images from the Compact Coronagraph 2 (CCOR-2) onboard the Space Weather Observations at L1 to Advance Readiness – 1 (SOLAR-1) observatory at SWPC’s coronagraph product page. Both regular and running-difference operational images are maintained for a limited time in FITS, JPEG and J2000 formats. The site stores MP4 videos of the most recent 24-hour, 7-day, and 27-day activity.
This event complemented the release of archived versions of the images at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Space Weather Portal (SPOT) earlier in the month following the June 9 provisional-maturity Product Validation Review (PVR). Both operational and science-grade images are archived for the long term. For questions on image quality, artifacts, and other issues, users are recommended to review the ReadMe file accesible at the Documentation tab in the SPOT page.
Part of the Space Weather Follow On (SWFO) program, the SOLAR-1 mission was launched on September 24, 2025 together with NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) and Carruthers Geocoronal Observatory (CGO). Originally known as Space Weather Follow On – Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1), the mission was renamed SOLAR-1 when it reached orbit around the first Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L1) on January 23, 2026. It was declared operational on June 10, 2026. CCOR-2 provides continuity in coronal imaging from SOHO/LASCO and can be combined with off-Sun-Earth-line observations, e.g., from STEREO/COR-2 and Parker Solar Probe/WISPR. The CCOR-2 instrument has a somewhat larger field of view (4.4 – 25 solar radii or 1.2 – 6.5 deg in elongation; diagonally extending out to ~27 solar radii or 7.3 deg) than CCOR-1 (4.5 – 22.5 solar radii or 1.2 – 6 deg) hosted on GOES-19.
Both coronagraphs were built by a Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) team led by Arnaud Thernisien. They are designed to observe coronal activity such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and provide images at a 15-min time resolution. Product levels and types are described in the SWFO Calibration and Validation Plan (CVP) available from the SWFO Data Products and Science webpage of the office of Space Weather Observations (SWO). In addition to the Level 0A – to Level 3 images, NCEI makes available higher-level data including daily-median and monthly-minimum images. NCEI will gradually reprocess and release images from times before the provisional-maturity PVR.
Points of contact:
- Coronagraph team, NCEI: swx.coronagraph@noaa.gov : general inquiries
- William Rowland, NCEI (william.rowland@noaa.gov): access to archived data
- Jeff Johnson, SWPC (jeff.m.johnson@noaa.gov): access to real-time data
- Dimitrios Vassiliadis, SWO (dimitrios.vassiliadis@noaa.gov): information on instrument requirements, design, and related publications.