Improving "Acquiring data" docs page

[dstansby]

ref - https://docs.sunpy.org/en/latest/guide/acquiring_data/index.html - this isn't a criticism at all, but a suggestion for improved docs.

If I want to download e.g. AIA 193 data, I would probably go to the SunPy docs, then find the "Acquiring data" page. From that page it is not obvious to me what to do though. In particular, I don't really know what the following mean or which one I should use, which are the top level options in the bulleted list

• Fido
• JSOC
• HEK
• Helioviewer.org

Maybe that page could do with a little bit of narrative documentation that tells users which of these options can be used for common tasks?

See #3800 as well.

[dpshelio]

I would say the page should only show Fido and other pages for other methods.

[m11dedhia]

I would like to work on this, @nabobalis what all should i necessarily add and what could make the doc even better?

[nabobalis]

Hi @m11dedhia, the original comment has a bunch of information that frames what might need changing on that documentation page. What would you like to know in addition to that?

[akshatvishu]

Hey! This is Akshat, I would like to work on this issue but so far I had a hard time finding contrasts between the above packages mentioned but here were my initial observations after going through sun docs:

• Fido -> supplies a single, easy and consistent way to to obtain most forms of solar physics data.
• Jsoc -> Use when you need to separate the staging and downloading steps which is not supported by Fido.
• helioviewer -> deals with JPEG2000 image data.
• HEK -> Provide access to Heliophysics Events Knowledgebase (HEK) system through HEK module.

So, Is Fido the preferred way to go unless someone wants to do something specific? It would be very kind if someone can point me towards where to look for the use-cases of the above packages.

[nabobalis]

Fido is the prefered way for all data sources.

helioviewer will most likely be removed from sunpy in future.

[akshatvishu]

@nabobalis So, for the doc change we can just add preferred or default in the sidebar menu to Fido so, its visible for everyone especially newcomers or should we add "Using Fido for data acquisition is preferred " in the Finding and Downloading Data using Fido page.

My suggestion is something like this :

Or we can also do this :

[nabobalis]

I don't like either approach.

Fundamentally, that section of documentation really needs a total rewrite now. Especially with the changes to Fido to add HEK support to it. As such, I am not sure this is a good first issue anymore.

[akshatvishu]

I see, thanks for your input!! Can you point me towards some doable first issues .

[nabobalis]

I see, thanks for your input!! Can you point me towards some doable first issues .

I would check out the other issues that have that label.

[dstansby]

I think the current page is good now, and solves my original issue