Browse, visualize, and analyze in situ plasma measurements from 70+ space missions — without fighting file formats, server APIs, or slow tools.
SciQLop in action — browsing MMS data
Space physicists deal with data scattered across multiple archives (CDAWeb, AMDA, CSA, SSCWeb, ...), each with its own API, file formats, and quirks. Downloading, reading, and cross-comparing multi-mission data involves too much plumbing and not enough science.
An ecosystem of open-source tools that handle the plumbing for you:
pip install speasy — Get Any Data in One Line
Access 65,000+ data products from AMDA, CDAWeb, CSA, SSCWeb, and CDPP 3DView through a single Python API. No file downloads, no format headaches.
import speasy as spz # Grab IMF data — that's it imf = spz.get_data("amda/imf", "2016-06-02", "2016-06-05") # Works with NumPy, Pandas, Matplotlib out of the box imf.plot()
Transparent caching (local + shared proxy), automatic inventory discovery, tab-completion in notebooks. Also available in Julia.
Download SciQLop — Interactive GUI for Data Exploration
A desktop application for fluid, lag-free browsing of multivariate time series — even on gigabyte-scale datasets.
- Drag & drop products from any supported archive
- Scroll & zoom seamlessly — data downloads transparently at plot edges
- Virtual products — write a Python function, see it recomputed live as you navigate
- Event catalogs — label intervals graphically, build catalogs as easily as bookmarking web pages — and co-edit them in real time with colleagues
- JupyterLab inside — hybrid interactive + programmatic workflows
- App Store & AI assistant — install community plugins from the built-in App Store, including AI chat backends that can plot and fetch data for you
Available as AppImage (Linux), DMG (macOS), or Windows installer — grab one from the latest release.
pip install pycdfpp — CDF Files, Fast
A modern C++ CDF library with Python bindings. Thread-safe, up to 4 GB/s read speed, no legacy baggage.
import pycdfpp cdf = pycdfpp.load("my_data.cdf") bx = cdf["Bx_GSE"]
| Layer | Tool | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| GUI | SciQLop | Interactive desktop app for browsing & labeling data |
| Plotting | SciQLopPlots | High-performance C++ rendering for large datasets |
| Data access | Speasy | Unified API for all major space physics archives |
| CDF I/O | CDFpp + PyISTP | Fast, thread-safe CDF reading/writing + ISTP metadata |
| Catalogs | tscat / cocat | Event catalogs with real-time CRDT-based collaborative editing |
| Infrastructure | speasy_proxy | Shared caching proxy — less load on public archives |
| Julia | Speasy.jl | Julia bindings for Speasy |
SciQLop GUI — download a ready-to-run build for your platform from the latest release: AppImage (Linux), DMG (macOS), or Windows installer.
Speasy (the data-access library) installs from PyPI:
pip install speasy
- Website · SciQLop tutorials · Speasy documentation
- Citing SciQLop: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.7379012
- Supported by CDPP and Plas@Par