PAPCO is an interactive data access and display interface. The user puts in start and stop time and date and the quantity to be displayed. The interface allows the user to design his or her own display by choosing from an array of symbols and colors and setting plotting limits and type of scale. More information about papco is available at http://leadbelly.lanl.gov/ccr/software/papco/papco.html.
After calibration, count data from the instrument's twelve detectors and at each of the 29 energy levels is averaged over the requested solid angle and interpolated onto an energy-time grid for plotting as a spectrogram. Differential energy flux is proportional to the counts for a given sample. Conversion to distribution function is done by applying the values of the detector area, solid angle, integration time, and fractional particle velocity bandwidth. The direction designations "parallel,""perpendicular," and "antiparallel" refer to the magnetic field and indicate sample averaging over pitch-angle ranges 0-30 °, 75-105 °, and 150-180 °.
When the desired settings are put in, PAPCO with the public Hydra module accesses data from the server at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Iowa. The interface then allows the construction of spectrograms, similar to the samples linked above.
By arrangement, it is possible to obtain plots of moment quantities. Similarly, it is possible to obtain plots with distribution function contours .
The construction of Hydra moment quantities can be found in Scudder, J., F. Hunsacker, G. Miller, J. Lobell, T. Zawistowski, K. Ogilvie, J. Keller, D. Chornay, F. Herrero, R. Fitzenreiter, D. Fairfield, J. Needell, D. Bodet, J. Googins, C. Kletzing, R. Torbert, J. Vandiver, R. Bentley, W. Fillius, C. McIlWain, and E. Whipple, Hydra - a 3-dimensional electron and ion hot plasma instrument for the Polar spacecraft of the GGS mission. In "The Global Geospace Mission," (C. T. Russell, ed.), pp. 459-495, Kluwer, Boston, 1995.