Search results for "solar wind"
showing 10 items of 30 documents
Hydrogen non-equilibrium ionisation effects in coronal mass ejections
2020
This research has received funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (UK) through the consolidated grant ST/N000609/1 and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 647214). D.H.M. would like to thank both the UK STFC and the ERC (Synergy grant: WHOLE SUN, grant Agreement No. 810218) for financial support. D.H.M. and P.P. would like to thank STFC for IAA funding under grant number SMC1-XAS012. This work used the DiRAC@Durham facility man-aged by the Institute for Computational Cosmology on behalf of the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility (www.dirac.ac.uk. The equipment was funded by BEIS capital fundin…
A SELF-SIMILAR EXPANSION MODEL FOR USE IN SOLAR WIND TRANSIENT PROPAGATION STUDIES
2012
Since the advent of wide-angle imaging of the inner heliosphere, a plethora of techniques have been developed to investigate the three-dimensional structure and kinematics of solar wind transients, such as coronal mass ejections, from their signatures in single- and multi-spacecraft imaging observations. These techniques, which range from the highly complex and computationally intensive to methods based on simple curve fitting, all have their inherent advantages and limitations. In the analysis of single-spacecraft imaging observations, much use has been made of the fixed fitting (FPF) and harmonic mean fitting (HMF) techniques, in which the solar wind transient is considered to be a radial…
A synoptic view of solar transient evolution in the inner heliosphere using the Heliospheric Imagers on STEREO
2009
[1] By exploiting data from the STEREO/heliospheric imagers (HI) we extend a well-established technique developed for coronal analysis by producing time-elongation plots that reveal the nature of solar transient activity over a far more extensive region of the heliosphere than previously possible from coronagraph images. Despite the simplicity of these plots, their power in demonstrating how the plethora of ascending coronal features observed near the Sun evolve as they move antisunward is obvious. The time-elongation profile of a transient tracked by HI can, moreover, be used to establish its angle out of the plane-of-the-sky; an illustration of such analysis reveals coronal mass ejection …
A coupled map as a model of the dynamics of the magnetotail current sheet
2001
Abstract A magnetic field model of the magnetotail current sheet in the form of a coupled-map lattice (CML) is presented. It is continuously driven (“running”) and based on the MHD diffusion equation. Solar wind vBS data (solar wind speed multiplied by the southward component of IMF) are used for driving the model, and it is shown to exhibit perturbations (avalanches) with power-law scalings in their distributions of duration and size. Such distributions may indicate self-organized critical (SOC) behavior. Furthermore, it is shown that the power spectra of the model outputs are of bicolor power-law form with different slopes for high and low frequencies. Although the “running” model gives p…
A coupled-map model for the magnetotail current sheet
1999
A magnetic field model of the magnetotail current sheet in the form of a coupled-map lattice (CML) is presented. It is a continuously driven and based on the MHD diffusion equation. Solar wind vBs data (solar wind speed multiplied by the southward component of IMF) are used for driving the model, and it is shown to exhibit perturbations (avalanches) with power-law scalings in their distributions of duration and size. Such distributions may indicate self-organized critical (SOC) behavior. Furthermore, it is shown that the power spectra of the model outputs are of bicolor power-law form with different slopes for high and low frequencies. The model parameters determine the frequency of the bre…
A multispacecraft analysis of a small-scale transient entrained by solar wind streams
2009
The images taken by the Heliospheric Imagers (HIs), part of the SECCHI imaging package onboard the pair of STEREO spacecraft, provide information on the radial and latitudinal evolution of the plasma compressed inside corotating interaction regions (CIRs). A plasma density wave imaged by the HI instrument onboard STEREO-B was found to propagate towards STEREO-A, enabling a comparison between simultaneous remote-sensing and in situ observations of its structure to be performed. In situ measurements made by STEREO-A show that the plasma density wave is associated with the passage of a CIR. The magnetic field compressed after the CIR stream interface (SI) is found to have a planar distribution…
The Solar Mass Ejection Imager and Its Heliospheric Imaging Legacy
2013
The Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI) was the first of a new class of helio- spheric and astronomical white-light imager. A heliospheric imager operates in a fashion similar to coronagraphs, in that it observes solar photospheric white light that has been Thomson scattered by free electrons in the solar wind plasma. Compared with traditional
First Direct Observation of the Interaction between a Comet and a Coronal Mass Ejection Leading to a Complete Plasma Tail Disconnection
2007
This a discovery report of the first direct imaging of the interaction a comet with a coronal mass ejection (CME) in the inner heliosphere with high temporal and spatial resolution. The observations were obtained by the Sun-Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI) Heliospheric Imager-1 (HI-1) aboard the STEREO mission. They reveal the extent of the plasma tail of comet 2P/Encke to unprecedented lengths and allow us to examine the mechanism behind a spectacular tail disconnection event. Our preliminary analysis suggests that the disconnection is driven by magnetic reconnection between the magnetic field entrained in the CME and the interplanetary field draped around t…
First imaging of corotating interaction regions using the STEREO spacecraft
2008
Plasma parcels are observed propagating from the Sun out to the large coronal heights monitored by the Heliospheric Imagers (HI) instruments onboard the NASA STEREO spacecraft during September 2007. The source region of these out-flowing parcels is found to corotate with the Sun and to be rooted near the western boundary of an equatorial coronal hole. These plasma enhancements evolve during their propagation through the HI cameras' fields of view and only becoming fully developed in the outer camera field of view. We provide evidence that HI is observing the formation of a Corotating Interaction Region (CIR) where fast solar wind from the equatorial coronal hole is interacting with the slow…
Coronal Magnetic Field Measurements Through Quasi-Transverse Propagation
2004
The QT-propagation of microwaves as a means to measure coronal magnetic fields and the inversion of circular polarization as an observational proof of the QT-propagation are discussed. The first part of the chapter briefly outlines the relevant geometry and mathematical relations. Then the state of the art in the coronal magnetography and some possibilities are demonstrated. We discuss use of the technique for coronal magnetography and give some estimates concerning the coronal magnetography with the forthcoming Frequency Agile Solar Radiotelescope.