No Arabic abstract
Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) originate from closed magnetic field regions on the Sun, which are active regions and quiescent filament regions. The energetic populations such as halo CMEs, CMEs associated with magnetic clouds, geoeffective CMEs, CMEs associated with solar energetic particles and interplanetary type II radio bursts, and shock-driving CMEs have been found to originate from sunspot regions. The CME and flare occurrence rates are found to be correlated with the sunspot number, but the correlations are significantly weaker during the maximum phase compared to the rise and declining phases. We suggest that the weaker correlation results from high-latitude CMEs from the polar crown filament regions that are not related to sunspots.
Stealth coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are eruptions from the Sun that have no obvious low coronal signature. These CMEs are characteristically slower events, but can still be geoeffective and affect space weather at Earth. Therefore, understanding the science underpinning these eruptions will greatly improve our ability to detect and, eventually, forecast them. We present a study of two stealth CMEs analysed using advanced image processing techniques that reveal their faint signatures in observations from the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) imagers onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), and Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft. The different viewpoints given by these spacecraft provide the opportunity to study each eruption from above and the side contemporaneously. For each event, EUV and magnetogram observations were combined to reveal the coronal structure that erupted. For one event, the observations indicate the presence of a magnetic flux rope before the CMEs fast rise phase. We found that both events originated in active regions and are likely to be sympathetic CMEs triggered by a nearby eruption. We discuss the physical processes that occurred in the time leading up to the onset of each stealth CME and conclude that these eruptions are part of the low-energy and velocity tail of a distribution of CME events, and are not a distinct phenomenon.
The present study is an attempt to investigate the long term variations in coronal rotation by analyzing the time series of the solar radio emission data at 2.8 GHz frequency for the period 1947 - 2009. Here, daily adjusted radio flux (known as Penticton flux) data are used. The autocorrelation analysis shows that the rotation period varies between 19.0 to 29.5 sidereal days (mean sidereal rotation period is 24.3 days). This variation in the coronal rotation period shows evidence of two components in the variation; (1) 22-years component which may be related to the solar magnetic field reversal cycle or Hales cycle, and (3) a component which is irregular in nature, but dominates over the other components. The crosscorrelation analysis between the annual average sunspots number and the coronal rotation period also shows evidence of its correlation with the 22-years Hales cycle. The 22-years component is found to be almost in phase with the corresponding periodicities in the variation of the sunspots number.
Observations of the solar corona with the Large Angle Spectrometric Coronograph (LASCO) and Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) instruments on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) provide an unprecedented opportunity to study coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from their initiation through their evolution out to 30 rsun. The objective of this study is to gain an understanding of the source regions from which the CMEs emanate. To this end, we have developed a list of 32 CMEs whose source regions are located on the solar disk and are well observed in EIT 195 {AA} data during the period from so lar minimum in January 1996 through the rising part of the cycle in May 1998. We compare the EIT source regions with photospheric magnetograms from the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) instrument on SOHO and the NSO/Kitt Peak Observatory and also with H$alpha$ data from various sources. The overall results of our study show that 41% of the CME related transients observed are associated with active regions and have no prominence eruptions, 44% are associated with eruptions of prominences embedded in active regions and 15% are associated with eruptions of prominences outside active regions. Those CMEs that do not involve prominence eruptions originate in active regions both with and without prominences. We describe 6 especially well observed events. These case studies suggest that active region CMEs (without eruptive prominences) are associated with active regions with lifetimes between 11--80 days. They are also often associated with small scale emerging or cancelling flux over timescales of 6--7 hours. CMEs associated with active region prominence eruptions, on the other hand, are typically associated with old active regions with lifetimes $sim$ 6-7 months.
We analyzed temporal and periodic behavior of sunspot counts (SSCs) in flaring (C, M, or X class flares), and non-flaring active regions (ARs) for the almost two solar cycles (1996 through 2016). Our main findings are as follows: i) The temporal variation of monthly means of daily total SSCs in flaring and non-flaring ARs are different and these differences are also varying from cycle to cycle; temporal profile of non-flaring ARs are wider than the flaring ones during the solar cycle 23, while they are almost the same during the current cycle 24. The second peak (second maximum) of flaring ARs are strongly dominate during current cycle 24, while this difference is not such a remarkable during cycle 23. The amplitude of SSCs in the non-flaring ARs are comparable during the first and second peaks (maxima) of the current solar cycle, while the first peak is almost not existent in case of the flaring ARs. ii) Periodic variations observed in SSCs of flaring and non-flaring ARs are quite different in both MTM spectrum and wavelet scalograms and these variations are also different from one cycle to another; the largest detected period in the flaring ARs is 113 days, while there are much higher periodicities (327, 312, and 256 days) in non-flaring ARs. There are no meaningful periodicities in MTM spectrum of flaring ARs exceeding 45 days during solar cycle 24, while a 113 days periodicity detected from flaring ARs of solar cycle 23. For the non-flaring ARs the largest period is 72 days during solar cycle 24, while the largest period is 327 days during current cycle.
A new generation of coronagraphs to study the solar wind and CMEs are being developed and launched. These coronagraphs will heavily rely on multi-channel observations where visible light (VL) and UV-EUV observations provide new plasma diagnostics. One of these instruments, Metis on board ESA-Solar Orbiter, will simultaneously observe VL and the UV Lyman-$alpha$ line. The number of neutral Hydrogen atoms (a small fraction of coronal protons) is a key parameter for deriving plasma properties such as temperature from the observed Lyman-$alpha$ line intensity. However, these measurements are significantly affected if non-equilibrium ionisation effects occur. The aim of this work is to determine if non-equilibrium ionisation effects are relevant in CMEs and in particular when and in which regions of the CME. We use a magneto-hydrodynamic simulation of a magnetic flux rope ejection to generate a CME. From this we then reconstruct the ionisation state of Hydrogen atoms in the CME by evaluating both the advection of neutral and ionised Hydrogen atoms and the ionisation and recombination rates in the MHD simulation. We find that the equilibrium ionisation assumption holds mostly in the core of the CME. In contrast non-equilibrium ionisation effects are significant at the CME front, where we find about 100 times more neutral Hydrogen atoms than prescribed by ionisation equilibrium conditions, even if this neutral Hydrogen excess might be difficult to identify due to projection effects. This work provides key information for the development of a new generation of diagnostic techniques that aim at combining visible light and Lyman-$alpha$ line emissions. The results show that non-ionisation equilibrium effects need to be considered when we analyse CME fronts. To incorrectly assume equilibrium ionisation in these regions would lead to a systematic underestimate of plasma temperatures.