Coronal and Interplanetary Structures Associated with Type III Bursts

This paper pursues former studies of the coronal structures that are associated with radio type III bursts by taking advantage of the new capabilities of STEREO/SECCHI. The data analysis has been performed for 02 and 03 June 2007. During these two days several type III bursts, which were detected in the corona and in the interplanetary medium, occurred during the observing time of the Nançay radioheliograph. Electron beams accelerated in the same active region and producing type III emissions almost at the same time, can propagate in different well defined coronal structures below 15 R_⊙. Then, these structures become imbedded in the same plasma sheet which can be tracked up to 0.25 AU. Inhomogeneities travel along these structures; their velocities measured between 15 and 35 R_⊙ are typical of those of a slow solar wind. Comparison with PFSS magnetic field extrapolation shows that its connection with the IP magnetic field is different from what is suggested by the present observations. These results are consistent with those obtained in the IP medium formerly by Buttighoffer (Astron. Astrophys. 335, 295, 1998) who identified by in situ measurements at 1 AU and beyond, the sites where Langmuir waves, associated with local type III emissions, are excited.     

Deprojected Trajectory of Blobs in the Inner Corona

We have carried out a statistical analysis of the kinematical behavior of small white-light transients (blobs) as tracers of the slow solar wind. The characterization of these faint white-light structures gives us insight on the origin and acceleration of the slow solar wind. The vantage observing points provided by the SECCHI and LASCO instruments on board the STEREO and SOHO spacecraft, respectively, allow us to reconstruct the 3D trajectories of these blob-like features and hence calculate their deprojected kinematical parameters. We have studied 44 blobs revealed in LASCO C2/C3 and SECCHI COR2 data from 2007 to 2008, a period within the solar minimum between Solar Cycles 23 and 24. We found that the blobs propagate along approximately constant position angles with accelerations from 1.40 to \(15.34~\mbox{m}\,\mbox{s}^{-2}\) between 3.42 \(R_{\astrosun }\) and 14.80 \(R_{\astrosun }\), their radial sizes ranging between 0.57 \(R_{\astrosun }\) and 1.69 \(R_{\astrosun }\). We also studied the global corona magnetic field morphology for a subset of blobs using a potential field source surface model for cases where blob detachments persist for two to five days. The study of localized blob releases indicates that these plasma structures start their transit at a distance of \(\sim\,{3.40}~R_{\astrosun }\) and their origin is connected either with the boundaries of weak coronal holes or with streamers at equatorial latitudes.     

Observing the reconnection region in a transequatorial loop system

A vertical current sheet is a crucial element in many flare/coronal mass ejection (CME) models. For the first time, Liu et al. reported a vertical current sheet directly imaged during the flare rising phase with the EUV Imaging Telescope (EIT) onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). As a follow-up study, here we present the comprehensive analysis and detailed physical interpretation of the observation. The current sheet formed due to the gradual rise of a transequatorial loop system. As the l...     

Sequential Coronal Mass Ejections from AR8038 in May 1997

Three homologous coronal mass ejections (CMEs) occurred on 5, 12 and 16 May 1997 from the single magnetic polarity inversion line (PIL) of AR8038. The three events together provide STEREO-like quadrature views of the 12 May 1997 CME and EIT double dimming. The recurrent CMEs with the nearly identical post-CME potential state and the ‘sigmoid to arcade to sigmoid’ transformations indicate a repeatable store?–?release?–?restore process of the free energy. How was the free magnetic energy re-introduced to the potential state corona after each release in this decaying active region? Making use of the known time interval bounded by the adjacent homologous CMEs, we made the following measures. The unsigned magnetic flux of AR8038, Φ_AR, decreased by approximately 18% during 66 h, while the unsigned flux, Φ_PIL, in a Gaussian-weighted PIL-region containing the flare site increased by about 50% during 36 hrs prior to the C1.3 flare on 12 May 1997. The significant increase of Φ_PIL demonstrates the magnetic gradient increase and the build-up of free energy in the PIL-region during the time leading to the eruption. Fourier local correlation tracking (FLCT) flow speed in AR8038 ranges from 0 to 292.8 m?s^?1 with a mean value of 63.2 m?s^?1. The flow field contains a persistent converging flow towards the flaring PIL and an effective shear flow distributed in the AR. Minor angular motions were found. An integrated proxy Poynting flux S _h estimates the energy input to the corona to be on the order of 1.15×10³² erg during the 66 hrs before the C1.3 flare. It suggests that sufficient energy for a flare/CME can be introduced to the corona on the order of several days by the flows deduced from photospheric magnetic field motions in this small decaying active region.     

Tracking of Coronal White-Light Events by Texture

The extraction of the kinematic properties of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from white-light coronagraph images involves a significant degree of user interaction: defining the edge of the event, separating the core from the front or from nearby unrelated structures, etc. To contribute towards a less subjective and more quantitative definition, and therefore better kinematic characterization of such events, we have developed a novel image-processing technique based on the concept of “texture of the event”. The texture is defined by the so-called gray-level co-occurrence matrix, and the technique consists of a supervised segmentation algorithm to isolate a particular region of interest based upon its similarity with a pre-specified model. Once the event is visually defined early in its evolution, it is possible to automatically track the event by applying the segmentation algorithm to the corresponding time series of coronagraph images. In this paper we describe the technique, present some examples, and show how the coronal background, the core of the event, and even the associated shock (if one exists) can be identified for different kind of CMEs detected by the LASCO and SECCHI coronagraphs.     

Magnetic Topology of Active Regions and Coronal Holes: Implications for Coronal Outflows and the Solar Wind

During 2??C?18 January 2008 a pair of low-latitude opposite-polarity coronal holes (CHs) were observed on the Sun with two active regions (ARs) and the heliospheric plasma sheet located between them. We use the Hinode/EUV Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) to locate AR-related outflows and measure their velocities. Solar-Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) imaging is also employed, as are the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) in-situ observations, to assess the resulting impacts on the solar wind (SW) properties. Magnetic-field extrapolations of the two ARs confirm that AR plasma outflows observed with EIS are co-spatial with quasi-separatrix layer locations, including the separatrix of a null point. Global potential-field source-surface modeling indicates that field lines in the vicinity of the null point extend up to the source surface, enabling a part of the EIS plasma upflows access to the SW. We find that similar upflow properties are also observed within closed-field regions that do not reach the source surface. We conclude that some of plasma upflows observed with EIS remain confined along closed coronal loops, but that a fraction of the plasma may be released into the slow SW. This suggests that ARs bordering coronal holes can contribute to the slow SW. Analyzing the in-situ data, we propose that the type of slow SW present depends on whether the AR is fully or partially enclosed by an overlying streamer.     

What Is the Nature of EUV Waves? First STEREO 3D Observations and Comparison with Theoretical Models

One of the major discoveries of the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) on SOHO was the intensity enhancements propagating over a large fraction of the solar surface. The physical origin(s) of the so-called EIT waves is still strongly debated with either wave (primarily fast-mode MHD waves) or nonwave (pseudo-wave) interpretations. The difficulty in understanding the nature of EUV waves lies in the limitations of the EIT observations that have been used almost exclusively for their study. They suffer from low cadence and single temperature and viewpoint coverage. These limitations are largely overcome by the SECCHI/EUVI observations onboard the STEREO mission. The EUVI telescopes provide high-cadence, simultaneous multitemperature coverage and two well-separated viewpoints. We present here the first detailed analysis of an EUV wave observed by the EUVI disk imagers on 7 December 2007 when the STEREO spacecraft separation was ≈?45°. Both a small flare and a coronal mass ejection (CME) were associated with the wave. We also offer the first comprehensive comparison of the various wave interpretations against the observations. Our major findings are as follows: (1) High-cadence (2.5-minute) 171 Å? images showed a strong association between expanding loops and the wave onset and significant differences in the wave appearance between the two STEREO viewpoints during its early stages; these differences largely disappeared later; (2) the wave appears at the active region periphery when an abrupt disappearance of the expanding loops occurs within an interval of 2.5 minutes; (3) almost simultaneous images at different temperatures showed that the wave was most visible in the 1?–?2 MK range and almost invisible in chromospheric/transition region temperatures; (4) triangulations of the wave indicate it was rather low lying (≈?90 Mm above the surface); (5) forward-fitting of the corresponding CME as seen by the COR1 coronagraphs showed that the projection of the best-fit model on the solar surface was inconsistent with the location and size of the co-temporal EUV wave; and (6) simulations of a fast-mode wave were found in good agreement with the overall shape and location of the observed wave. Our findings give significant support for a fast-mode interpretation of EUV waves and indicate that they are probably triggered by the rapid expansion of the loops associated with the CME.     

A Quick Method for Estimating the Propagation Direction of Coronal Mass Ejections Using STEREO-COR1 Images

We describe here a method to obtain the position of a coronal moving feature in a three-dimensional coordinate system based on height – time measurements applied to STEREO data. By using the height – time diagrams from the two SECCHI-COR1 coronagraphs onboard STEREO, one can easily determine the direction of propagation of a coronal mass ejection (i.e., if the moving plasma is oriented toward or away from the Earth). This method may prove to be a useful tool for space weather forecasting by easily identifying the direction of propagation as well as the real speed of the coronal mass ejections.