Helio-Lite: An Open Cloud Framework for Advancing Heliophysics Research

Helio-Lite is an open-source, cloud-deployable toolkit designed to set up a web platform that empowers heliophysics researchers, educators, and citizen scientists across time zones. Helio-Lite provides configuration scripts and pre-built environments that users deploy in their own Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounts, allowing them to retain full control over resource allocation and data management. The toolkit includes curated Jupyter notebooks, two custom computational environments, and built-in access to open solar datasets from missions such as the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). It automates data acquisition from major solar data repositories, supports exploratory and real-time analysis in JupyterLab, and serves as a reproducible testbed for scientific and machine learning (ML) workflows. By lowering infrastructure barriers, Helio-Lite advances broader participation and reusability in space weather research.