No Arabic abstract
The Large Yield Radiometer (LYRA) is a radiometer that has monitored the solar irradiance at high cadence and in four pass bands since January 2010. Both the instrument and its space- craft, PROBA2 (Project for On-Board Autonomy), have several innovative features for space instrumentation, which makes the data reduction necessary to retrieve the long term variations of solar irradiance more complex than for a fully optimized solar physics mission. In this paper, we describe how we compute the long term time series of the two extreme ultraviolet irradiance channels of LYRA, and compare the results with SDO/EVE. We find that the solar EUV irradi- ance has increased by a factor 2 since the last solar minimum (between solar cycles 23 and 24), which agrees reasonably well with the EVE observations.
Motivated by the need to improve the ability to forecast whether a certain coronal mass ejection (CME) is to impact Earth, and by the insufficiency of statistical studies that analyze the whole erupting system with the focus on the governing conditions under CME deflections, we performed a careful analysis of 13 events along a one-year time interval showing large deflections from their source region. We used telescopes imaging the solar corona at different heights and wavelengths on board the Project for Onboard Autonomy 2 (PROBA2), Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO), Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft and from National Solar Observatory (NSO). By taking advantage of the quadrature position of these spacecraft from October 2010 until September 2011, we inspected the 3D trajectory of CMEs and their associated prominences with respect to their solar sources by means of a tie-pointing tool and a forward model. Considering the coronal magnetic fields as computed from a potential field source surface model, we investigate the roles of magnetic energy distribution and kinematic features in the non-radial propagation of both structures. The magnetic environment present during the eruption is found to be crucial in determining the trajectory of CMEs, in agreement with previous reports.
We analyze the light curves of the recent solar eclipses measured by the Herzberg channel (200-220 nm) of the Large Yield RAdiometer (LYRA) onboard PROBA-2. The measurements allow us to accurately retrieve the center- to-limb variations (CLV) of the solar brightness. The formation height of the radiation depends on the observing angle so the examination of the CLV provide information about a broad range of heights in the solar atmosphere. We employ the 1D NLTE radiative transfer COde for Solar Irradiance (COSI) to model the measured light curves and corresponding CLV dependencies. The modeling is used to test and constrain the existing 1D models of the solar atmosphere, e.g. the temperature structure of the photosphere and the treatment of the pseudo- continuum opacities in the Herzberg continuum range. We show that COSI can accurately reproduce not only the irradiance from the entire solar disk, but also the measured CLV. It hence can be used as a reliable tool for modeling the variability of the spectral solar irradiance.
We investigate the characteristics and the sources of the slow (< 450 km/s) solar wind during the four years (2006-2009) of low solar activity between Solar Cycles 23 and 24. We use a comprehensive set of in-situ observations in the near-Earth solar wind (Wind and ACE) and remove the periods when large-scale interplanetary coronal mass ejections were present. The investigated period features significant variations in the global coronal structure, including the frequent presence of low-latitude active regions in 2006-2007, long-lived low- and mid-latitude coronal holes in 2006 - mid-2008 and mostly the quiet Sun in 2009. We examine both Carrington Rotation averages of selected solar plasma, charge state and compositional parameters and distributions of these parameters related to Quiet Sun, Active Region Sun and the Coronal Hole Sun. While some of the investigated parameters (e.g., speed, the C^{+6}/C^{+4} and He/H ratio) show clear variations over our study period and with solar wind source type, some (Fe/O) exhibit very little changes. Our results highlight the difficulty in distinguishing between the slow solar wind sources based on the inspection of the solar wind conditions.
The paper presents results of a search for helioseismic events (sunquakes) produced by M-X class solar flares during Solar Cycle 24. The search is performed by analyzing photospheric Dopplergrams from Helioseismic Magnetic Imager (HMI). Among the total number of 500 M-X class flares, 94 helioseismic events were detected. Our analysis has shown that many strong sunquakes were produced by solar flares of low M class (M1-M5), while in some powerful X-class flares helioseismic waves were not observed or were weak. Our study also revealed that only several active regions were characterized by the most efficient generation of helioseismic waves during flares. We found that the sunquake power correlates with the maximum value of the soft X-ray flux time derivative better than with the X-ray class, indicating that the sunquake mechanism is associated with high-energy particles. We also show that the seismically active flares are more impulsive than the flares without helioseismic perturbations. We present a new catalog of helioseismic solar flares, which opens opportunities for performing statistical studies to better understand the physics of sunquakes as well as the flare energy release and transport.
As an observational case study, we consider the origin of a prominent poleward surge of leading polarity, visible in the magnetic butterfly diagram during Solar Cycle 24. A new technique is developed for assimilating individual regions of strong magnetic flux into a surface flux transport model. By isolating the contribution of each of these regions, the model shows the surge to originate primarily in a single high-latitude activity group consisting of a bipolar active region present in Carrington Rotations 2104-05 (November 2010-January 2011) and a multipolar active region in Rotations 2107-08 (February-April 2011). This group had a strong axial dipole moment opposed to Joys law. On the other hand, the modelling suggests that the transient influence of this group on the butterfly diagram will not be matched by a large long-term contribution to the polar field, because of its location at high latitude. This is in accordance with previous flux transport models.