Spatial and Temporal Noise in Solar EUV Observations

Solar telescopes will never be able to resolve the smallest events at their intrinsic physical scales. Pixel signals recorded by SOHO/(CDS, EIT, SUMER), STEREO/SECCHI/ EUVI, TRACE, SDO/AIA, and even by the future Solar Orbiter EUI/HRI contain an inherent “spatial noise” since they represent an average of the solar signal present at subpixel scales. In this paper, we aim at investigating this spatial noise, and hopefully at extracting information from subpixel scales. Two paths are explored. We first combine a regularity analysis of a sequence of EIT images with an estimation of the relationship between mean and standard deviation, and we formulate a scenario for the evolution of the local signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as the pixel size becomes smaller. Second, we use an elementary forward modeling to examine the relationship between nanoflare characteristics (such as area, duration, and intensity) and the global mean and standard deviation. We use theoretical distributions of nanoflare parameters as input to the forward model. A fine-grid image is generated as a random superposition of those pseudo-nanoflares. Coarser resolution images (simulating images acquired by a telescope) are obtained by rebinning and are used to compute the mean and standard deviation to be analyzed. Our results show that the local SNR decays more slowly in regions exhibiting irregularities than in smooth regions.