MIDL Usage Instructions

Basic Usage Instructions

for the MIDAS Tool

When it first starts, MIDL shows you the dataset browser panel. This panel lets you view a summary image for each day of every mission for which data is available. You can select the mission name from a list of missions in the box on the upper left of the screen.

The main tool shows a summary image of the data for one day. This image is just a static image (GIF, PNG, JPEG, etc) and is not interactive. It simply serves as a way to visualize the data for a particular day.

The vertical red bars can be slid back and forth to select a time window within the day, and then the buttons on the right can be used to launch detailed plots with just the data inside the selected time range.

The time range can also be selected by typing a time range into the text boxes on the lower left. This allows time periods across day boundaries to be selected. In fact, you can select as large a set of data as you want, subject to memory restrictions of course.

Individual analysis tools can be selected and launched. The list of available tools is shown at the top just to the left of the summary image panel.

The extraction of data (i.e., the saving of ASCII data to your own computer) is possible. There is a button labelled "ASCII Save Panel", which opens another window designed for saving data to your local machine. Also, the individual plotting tools have a mechanism allowing you to view an ASCII table of the data currently being viewed. The table window then contains a "File" menu, which allows you to save the items in the table to a file on your local computer.


Last modified: Mon Nov 03 20:14:10 Eastern Standard Time 2003