Acquiring Data#

This section of the tutorial introduces ways to obtain different kind of solar data from different places. The main tutorial below focuses on Fido, which is a generic search interface that sunpy provides. There are some data-provider specific tutorials that you might want to visit after going through this tutorial:

This guide outlines how to search for and download data using the Fido interface for search and download. Fido is a unified interface for searching and fetching solar physics data irrespective of the underlying client or web service through which the data is obtained. It therefore supplies a single, easy, and consistent way to obtain most forms of solar physics data.

The Fido object is in sunpy.net. All the examples in this guide use Fido, so lets start by importing it:

>>> from sunpy.net import Fido, attrs as a

Fido supports a number of different remote data sources. To see a list the Fido object can be printed:

>>> print(Fido)
sunpy.net.Fido

Fido is a unified data search and retrieval tool.

It provides simultaneous access to a variety of online data sources, some
cover multiple instruments and data products like the Virtual Solar
Observatory and some are specific to a single source.

For details of using `~sunpy.net.Fido` see :ref:`sunpy-tutorial-acquiring-data-index`.


      Client                                                    Description
----------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CDAWEBClient      Provides access to query and download from the Coordinated Data Analysis Web (CDAWeb).
EVEClient         Provides access to Level 0CS Extreme ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE) data.
GBMClient         Provides access to data from the Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor (GBM) instrument on board the Fermi satellite.
XRSClient         Provides access to several GOES XRS files archive.
SUVIClient        Provides access to data from the GOES Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI).
GONGClient        Provides access to the Magnetogram products of NSO-GONG synoptic Maps.
LYRAClient        Provides access to the LYRA/Proba2 data archive.
NOAAIndicesClient Provides access to the NOAA solar cycle indices.
NOAAPredictClient Provides access to the NOAA SWPC predicted sunspot Number and 10.7 cm radio flux values.
SRSClient         Provides access to the NOAA SWPC solar region summary data.
NoRHClient        Provides access to the Nobeyama RadioHeliograph (NoRH) averaged correlation time series data.
RHESSIClient      Provides access to the RHESSI observing summary time series data.
HEKClient         Provides access to the Heliophysics Event Knowledgebase (HEK).
HECClient         Provides access to the HELIO webservices.
JSOCClient        Provides access to the JSOC Data Export service.
VSOClient         Provides access to query and download from Virtual Solar Observatory (VSO).

Searching for Data#

To search for data with Fido, you need to specify attributes to search with. Examples of generic search attributes that work across many different data sources are:

Some other attributes are client specific, and are found under client specific submodules, e.g. attrs.vso and attrs.jsoc. The full list of attributes can be found in the attrs submodule reference.

Some search attributes need one or more values specifying, for example Time needs at least a start and an end date to specify a time range:

>>> a.Time('2012/3/4', '2012/3/6')
<sunpy.net.attrs.Time(2012-03-04 00:00:00.000, 2012-03-06 00:00:00.000)>

For attributes that can take a range of different values, printing the attribute lists the values sunpy knows about. These values are updated with every release of sunpy, so may not be always up to date! As an example:

>>> print(a.Instrument)
sunpy.net.attrs.Instrument

Specifies the Instrument name for the search.

       Attribute Name          Client          Full Name                                           Description
--------------------------- ----------- ------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
aia                         VSO         AIA                      Atmospheric Imaging Assembly
bcs                         VSO         BCS                      Bragg Crystal Spectrometer
be_continuum                VSO         BE-Continuum             INAF-OACT Barra Equatoriale Continuum Instrument
be_halpha                   VSO         BE-Halpha                INAF-OACT Barra Equatoriale Hα Instrument
bigbear                     VSO         Big Bear                 Big Bear Solar Observatory, California TON and GONG+ sites
caii                        VSO         CAII                     Kanzelhöhe Ca II k Instrument
cds                         VSO         CDS                      Coronal Diagnostic Spectrometer
celias                      VSO         CELIAS                   Charge, Element, and Isotope Analysis System
...

This is a full list of known values, a description, and which clients support those values (if you want to search using a specific data source). Printing attributes like this is supported for most attributes, including client specific ones. These attributes also support tab-completion to auto to auto-fill the attribute name, for example typing a.jsoc.aia_f<TAB> in a jupyter notebook will show you the available attributes that start with “aia_f”.

To search for data use the Fido.search method:

>>> result = Fido.search(a.Time('2012/3/4', '2012/3/6'), a.Instrument.lyra, a.Level.two) 

this returns an UnifiedResponse object containing all the search results that match the search attributes. This does not download the files; we’ll learn how to do that later in Downloading data.

To see a summary of the results print the result variable that came back from the previous search:

>>> print(result)  
Results from 1 Provider:

3 Results from the LYRAClient:
Source: http://proba2.oma.be/lyra/data/bsd

       Start Time               End Time        Instrument ... Provider Level
----------------------- ----------------------- ---------- ... -------- -----
2012-03-04 00:00:00.000 2012-03-04 23:59:59.999       LYRA ...      ESA     2
2012-03-05 00:00:00.000 2012-03-05 23:59:59.999       LYRA ...      ESA     2
2012-03-06 00:00:00.000 2012-03-06 23:59:59.999       LYRA ...      ESA     2

Queries can be made more flexible or specific by adding more attrs objects to the Fido search. As an example, specific passbands can be searched for by supplying a Quantity to the a.Wavelength attribute:

>>> import astropy.units as u

>>> Fido.search(a.Time('2012/3/4', '2012/3/4'), a.Instrument.aia,
...             a.Wavelength(171*u.angstrom))  
<sunpy.net.fido_factory.UnifiedResponse object at ...>
Results from 1 Provider:

1 Results from the VSOClient:
Source: http://vso.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/search
Total estimated size: 67.789 Mbyte

       Start Time               End Time        Source ... Extent Type   Size
                                                       ...              Mibyte
----------------------- ----------------------- ------ ... ----------- --------
2012-03-04 00:00:00.000 2012-03-04 00:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844

Data of a given cadence can also be specified using the a.Sample attribute:

>>> Fido.search(a.Time('2012/3/4', '2012/3/6'), a.Instrument.aia,
...             a.Wavelength(171*u.angstrom), a.Sample(120*u.minute))  
<sunpy.net.fido_factory.UnifiedResponse object at ...>
Results from 1 Provider:

25 Results from the VSOClient:
Source: http://vso.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/search
Total estimated size: 1.695 Gbyte

       Start Time               End Time        Source ... Extent Type   Size
                                                       ...              Mibyte
----------------------- ----------------------- ------ ... ----------- --------
2012-03-04 00:00:00.000 2012-03-04 00:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-04 02:00:00.000 2012-03-04 02:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-04 04:00:00.000 2012-03-04 04:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-04 06:00:00.000 2012-03-04 06:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-04 08:00:00.000 2012-03-04 08:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-04 10:00:00.000 2012-03-04 10:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-04 12:00:00.000 2012-03-04 12:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-04 14:00:00.000 2012-03-04 14:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-04 16:00:00.000 2012-03-04 16:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-04 18:00:00.000 2012-03-04 18:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
                    ...                     ...    ... ...         ...      ...
2012-03-05 06:00:00.000 2012-03-05 06:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-05 08:00:00.000 2012-03-05 08:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-05 10:00:00.000 2012-03-05 10:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-05 12:00:00.000 2012-03-05 12:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-05 14:00:00.000 2012-03-05 14:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-05 16:00:00.000 2012-03-05 16:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-05 18:00:00.000 2012-03-05 18:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-05 20:00:00.000 2012-03-05 20:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-05 22:00:00.000 2012-03-05 22:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2012-03-06 00:00:00.000 2012-03-06 00:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
Length = 25 rows

To search for data from multiple instruments, wavelengths, times etc., use the pipe | operator which joins queries using a logical “OR” operator. In this example we’ll search for LYRA or RHESSI data in a given time range:

>>> Fido.search(a.Time('2012/3/4', '2012/3/4 02:00'),
...             a.Instrument.lyra | a.Instrument.rhessi)  
<sunpy.net.fido_factory.UnifiedResponse object at ...>
Results from 3 Providers:

2 Results from the LYRAClient:
Source: http://proba2.oma.be/lyra/data/bsd

       Start Time               End Time        Instrument ... Provider Level
----------------------- ----------------------- ---------- ... -------- -----
2012-03-04 00:00:00.000 2012-03-04 23:59:59.999       LYRA ...      ESA     2
2012-03-04 00:00:00.000 2012-03-04 23:59:59.999       LYRA ...      ESA     3

1 Results from the RHESSIClient:
Source: https://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/hessidata

       Start Time               End Time        Instrument ... Source Provider
----------------------- ----------------------- ---------- ... ------ --------
2012-03-04 00:00:00.000 2012-03-04 23:59:59.999     RHESSI ... RHESSI     NASA

3 Results from the VSOClient:
Source: http://vso.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/search

       Start Time               End Time        Source ... Extent Type   Size
                                                       ...              Mibyte
----------------------- ----------------------- ------ ... ----------- --------
2012-03-03 22:57:40.000 2012-03-04 00:33:20.000 RHESSI ... PARTIAL_SUN -0.00098
2012-03-04 00:33:20.000 2012-03-04 01:45:40.000 RHESSI ... PARTIAL_SUN -0.00098
2012-03-04 01:45:40.000 2012-03-04 02:09:00.000 RHESSI ... PARTIAL_SUN -0.00098

Working with Search Results#

Fido.search can make multiple queries to multiple clients in one search. This means that the results of a call to search can contain many sets of records, called responses, from many clients. The results of a search are represented in a UnifiedResponse object, which provides access to all the response tables and allows some operations to be performed on all the results at once. UnifiedResponse acts both like a two dimensional array, where the first dimension is the response index and the second index is the row index, and a dictionary where you can index the responses by the name of the client.

For example, the following code returns a response containing LYRA data from the LYRAClient, and EVE data from the VSOClient:

>>> results = Fido.search(a.Time("2012/1/1", "2012/1/2"), a.Level.two,
...                       a.Instrument.lyra | a.Instrument.eve)  
>>> results  
<sunpy.net.fido_factory.UnifiedResponse object at ...>
Results from 2 Providers:

2 Results from the LYRAClient:
Source: http://proba2.oma.be/lyra/data/bsd

       Start Time               End Time        Instrument ... Provider Level
----------------------- ----------------------- ---------- ... -------- -----
2012-01-01 00:00:00.000 2012-01-01 23:59:59.999       LYRA ...      ESA     2
2012-01-02 00:00:00.000 2012-01-02 23:59:59.999       LYRA ...      ESA     2

50 Results from the VSOClient:
Source: http://vso.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/search

       Start Time               End Time        Source ... Extent Type   Size
                                                       ...              Mibyte
----------------------- ----------------------- ------ ... ----------- --------
2012-01-01 00:00:00.000 2012-01-01 01:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-01 00:00:00.000 2012-01-01 01:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-01 01:00:00.000 2012-01-01 02:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-01 01:00:00.000 2012-01-01 02:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-01 02:00:00.000 2012-01-01 03:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-01 02:00:00.000 2012-01-01 03:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-01 03:00:00.000 2012-01-01 04:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-01 03:00:00.000 2012-01-01 04:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-01 04:00:00.000 2012-01-01 05:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-01 04:00:00.000 2012-01-01 05:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
                    ...                     ...    ... ...         ...      ...
2012-01-01 20:00:00.000 2012-01-01 21:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-01 20:00:00.000 2012-01-01 21:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-01 21:00:00.000 2012-01-01 22:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-01 21:00:00.000 2012-01-01 22:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-01 22:00:00.000 2012-01-01 23:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-01 22:00:00.000 2012-01-01 23:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-01 23:00:00.000 2012-01-02 00:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-01 23:00:00.000 2012-01-02 00:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-02 00:00:00.000 2012-01-02 01:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2012-01-02 00:00:00.000 2012-01-02 01:00:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
Length = 50 rows

If you then wanted to inspect just the LYRA data for the whole time range specified in the search, you would index this response to see just the results returned by the LYRAClient:

>>> results[0, :]  
<sunpy.net.dataretriever.client.QueryResponse object at ...>
       Start Time               End Time        Instrument ... Provider Level
----------------------- ----------------------- ---------- ... -------- -----
2012-01-01 00:00:00.000 2012-01-01 23:59:59.999       LYRA ...      ESA     2
2012-01-02 00:00:00.000 2012-01-02 23:59:59.999       LYRA ...      ESA     2

Or, equivalently:

>>> results["lyra"]  
<sunpy.net.dataretriever.client.QueryResponse object at ...>
       Start Time               End Time        Instrument ... Provider Level
----------------------- ----------------------- ---------- ... -------- -----
2012-01-01 00:00:00.000 2012-01-01 23:59:59.999       LYRA ...      ESA     2
2012-01-02 00:00:00.000 2012-01-02 23:59:59.999       LYRA ...      ESA     2

Normal slicing operations work as with any other Python sequence, e.g. results[1, ::10] to access every tenth file in the result returned by the second client.

Note that the first (response) index is still necessary even if results are only found for a single client. So in this case the first result would be results[0, 0] rather than results[0] (the latter would return all results from the first - and only - client and is therefore the same as results).

As we have seen above the UnifiedResponse object contains many response tables which make up the search results. Each of the responses are QueryResponseTable objects, which are astropy.table objects meaning that you can interact with them and filter them like any other tabular data. This can be used to interact with results which are metadata only, i.e. searches from the HEK, or it can be used to reduce the number of files downloaded by Fido.fetch.

For example if we did a query for some AIA and HMI data:

>>> results = Fido.search(a.Time("2020/01/01", "2020/01/01 00:01"), a.Instrument.aia | a.Instrument.hmi)  
>>> results  
<sunpy.net.fido_factory.UnifiedResponse object at ...>
Results from 2 Providers:

41 Results from the VSOClient:
Source: http://vso.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/search
Total estimated size: 2.779 Gbyte

       Start Time               End Time        Source ... Extent Type   Size
                                                       ...              Mibyte
----------------------- ----------------------- ------ ... ----------- --------
2020-01-01 00:00:00.000 2020-01-01 00:00:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:04.000 2020-01-01 00:00:05.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:05.000 2020-01-01 00:00:06.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:05.000 2020-01-01 00:00:06.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:06.000 2020-01-01 00:00:07.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:09.000 2020-01-01 00:00:10.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:09.000 2020-01-01 00:00:10.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:11.000 2020-01-01 00:00:12.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:12.000 2020-01-01 00:00:13.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:14.000 2020-01-01 00:00:15.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
                    ...                     ...    ... ...         ...      ...
2020-01-01 00:00:47.000 2020-01-01 00:00:48.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:48.000 2020-01-01 00:00:49.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:52.000 2020-01-01 00:00:53.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:52.000 2020-01-01 00:00:53.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:53.000 2020-01-01 00:00:54.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:54.000 2020-01-01 00:00:55.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:57.000 2020-01-01 00:00:58.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:57.000 2020-01-01 00:00:58.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:00:59.000 2020-01-01 00:01:00.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
2020-01-01 00:01:00.000 2020-01-01 00:01:01.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK 64.64844
Length = 41 rows

3 Results from the VSOClient:
Source: http://vso.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/search

       Start Time               End Time        Source ... Extent Type   Size
                                                       ...              Mibyte
----------------------- ----------------------- ------ ... ----------- --------
2020-01-01 00:00:22.000 2020-01-01 00:00:23.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2020-01-01 00:00:22.000 2020-01-01 00:00:23.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098
2020-01-01 00:00:22.000 2020-01-01 00:00:23.000    SDO ...    FULLDISK -0.00098

The VSO client returns a lot of information about the records, so the first thing we can do is show only the columns we are interested in. We can inspect all the available column names in all the responses with the all_colnames property:

>>> results.all_colnames  
['End Time', 'Extent Length', 'Extent Type', 'Extent Width', 'Instrument', 'Physobs', 'Provider', 'Size', 'Source', 'Start Time', 'Wavelength', 'Wavetype', 'fileid']

And then we can pick which ones to see with the show() method:

>>> results.show("Start Time", "Instrument", "Physobs", "Wavelength")  
<sunpy.net.fido_factory.UnifiedResponse object at ...>
Results from 2 Providers:

41 Results from the VSOClient:
Source: http://vso.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/search

       Start Time       Instrument  Physobs     Wavelength
                                                 Angstrom
----------------------- ---------- --------- ----------------
2020-01-01 00:00:00.000        AIA intensity   335.0 .. 335.0
2020-01-01 00:00:04.000        AIA intensity   193.0 .. 193.0
2020-01-01 00:00:05.000        AIA intensity   304.0 .. 304.0
2020-01-01 00:00:05.000        AIA intensity 4500.0 .. 4500.0
2020-01-01 00:00:06.000        AIA intensity   131.0 .. 131.0
2020-01-01 00:00:09.000        AIA intensity   171.0 .. 171.0
2020-01-01 00:00:09.000        AIA intensity   211.0 .. 211.0
2020-01-01 00:00:11.000        AIA intensity     94.0 .. 94.0
2020-01-01 00:00:12.000        AIA intensity   335.0 .. 335.0
2020-01-01 00:00:14.000        AIA intensity 1600.0 .. 1600.0
                    ...        ...       ...              ...
2020-01-01 00:00:47.000        AIA intensity     94.0 .. 94.0
2020-01-01 00:00:48.000        AIA intensity   335.0 .. 335.0
2020-01-01 00:00:52.000        AIA intensity 1700.0 .. 1700.0
2020-01-01 00:00:52.000        AIA intensity   193.0 .. 193.0
2020-01-01 00:00:53.000        AIA intensity   304.0 .. 304.0
2020-01-01 00:00:54.000        AIA intensity   131.0 .. 131.0
2020-01-01 00:00:57.000        AIA intensity   171.0 .. 171.0
2020-01-01 00:00:57.000        AIA intensity   211.0 .. 211.0
2020-01-01 00:00:59.000        AIA intensity     94.0 .. 94.0
2020-01-01 00:01:00.000        AIA intensity   335.0 .. 335.0
Length = 41 rows

3 Results from the VSOClient:
Source: http://vso.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/search

       Start Time       Instrument      Physobs          Wavelength
                                                          Angstrom
----------------------- ---------- ------------------ ----------------
2020-01-01 00:00:22.000        HMI          intensity 6173.0 .. 6174.0
2020-01-01 00:00:22.000        HMI LOS_magnetic_field 6173.0 .. 6174.0
2020-01-01 00:00:22.000        HMI       LOS_velocity 6173.0 .. 6174.0

To give an example of filtering post-search, let’s only return the rows in the table which are line-of-sight magnetograms from HMI or the 94Å passband from AIA. You can also always do this filtering with the a.Physobs and a.Wavelength attrs in the search command.

First we split the results in to a table for AIA and a table for HMI:

>>> aia, hmi = results  

We can use boolean indexing to match the value of the "Physobs" column:

>>> hmi_los = hmi[hmi["Physobs"] == "LOS_magnetic_field"]  
>>> hmi_los.show("Start Time", "Instrument", "Wavelength", "Physobs")  
<sunpy.net.vso.table_response.VSOQueryResponseTable object at ...>
       Start Time       Instrument    Wavelength         Physobs
                                       Angstrom
----------------------- ---------- ---------------- ------------------
2020-01-01 00:00:22.000        HMI 6173.0 .. 6174.0 LOS_magnetic_field

To match the "Wavelength" column we need to account for the fact that VSO results return a wavelength range of [min, max] so we match the min:

>>> aia_94 = aia[aia["Wavelength"][:, 0] == 94 * u.AA]  
>>> aia_94.show("Start Time", "Instrument", "Wavelength", "Physobs")  
<sunpy.net.vso.table_response.VSOQueryResponseTable object at ...>
       Start Time       Instrument  Wavelength   Physobs
                                     Angstrom
----------------------- ---------- ------------ ---------
2020-01-01 00:00:11.000        AIA 94.0 .. 94.0 intensity
2020-01-01 00:00:23.000        AIA 94.0 .. 94.0 intensity
2020-01-01 00:00:35.000        AIA 94.0 .. 94.0 intensity
2020-01-01 00:00:47.000        AIA 94.0 .. 94.0 intensity
2020-01-01 00:00:59.000        AIA 94.0 .. 94.0 intensity

Warning

While you can reduce the number of columns and rows in the results, the fetch() method that downloads data may need certain columns to be present to successfully download the files. It is therefore highly recommended that if you are planning on downloading data you do not slice out columns, but instead use .show() to only display the ones you are interested in.

Downloading data#

Once you have located your files via a Fido.search, you can download them via Fido.fetch. Here we’ll just download the first file in the result:

>>> downloaded_files = Fido.fetch(results[0, 0]) 
>>> downloaded_files 
<parfive.results.Results object at ...>
['.../aia.lev1.335A_2020_01_01T00_00_00.64Z.image_lev1.fits']

This downloads the files to the location set in the sunpy config file. It also returns a parfive.Results object downloaded_files, which contains local file paths to all the downloaded data.

You can also explicitly specify the path to which you want the data downloaded:

>>> downloaded_files = Fido.fetch(results, path='/ThisIs/MyPath/to/Data/{file}')  

This downloads the query results into the directory /ThisIs/MyPath/to/Data, naming each downloaded file with the filename {file} obtained from the client. You can also use other properties of the returned query to define the path where the data is saved. For example, to save the data to a subdirectory named after the instrument, use:

>>> downloaded_files = Fido.fetch(results, path='./{instrument}/{file}')  

You can see the list of options that can be specified in path for all the files to be downloaded with results.path_format_keys:

>>> sorted(results.path_format_keys()) 
['end_time', 'extent_length', 'extent_type', 'extent_width', 'fileid', 'instrument', 'physobs', 'provider', 'size', 'source', 'start_time', 'wavelength', 'wavetype']

Retrying Downloads#

If any files failed to download, the progress bar will show an incomplete number of files (i.e. 100/150) and the parfive.Results object will contain a list of the URLs that failed to transfer and the error associated with them. This can be accessed with the .errors attribute or by printing the Results object:

>>> print(downloaded_files.errors)  

The transfer can be retried by passing the parfive.Results object back to Fido.fetch:

>>> downloaded_files = Fido.fetch(downloaded_files)  

doing this will append any newly downloaded file names to the list and replace the .errors list with any errors that occurred during the second attempt.