On the 3D Reconstruction of Coronal Mass Ejections

Description
Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are enormous eruptions of magnetized plasma ejected from the Sun into interplanetary space. They can create major disturbances in the interplanetary medium and trigger severe magnetic storms when they collide with the Earth's magnetosphere. This is why is important to know their dynamics and 3D configuration. Using data from SECCHI-COR1 and SECCHI-COR2 coronagraphs onboard STEREO twin spacecraft mission which was launched in October 2006 we can infer the 3-D structure of such events. We apply four methods for reconstructing CMEs: 1) LCT+TP: Local correlation (to identify the same feature in COR Ahead and COR Behind images) plus tie-point reconstruction technique; 2) CM+TP: Center of mass (along epipolar lines) plus tie-point reconstruction technique; 3) PR: Polarization ratio technique (see for e.g. Moran and Davila 2004); 4) FM: Forward modelling technique (see Thernisien et al. 2006). The four techniques are applied on different CMEs observed by COR1 and COR2 coronagraphs onboard STEREO. The images provided by SWAP onboard the newly launched mission PROBA2 (in November 2009) will be used as the third eye on the Sun. A summary of the results is presented and discussed.
Organised by Alessandro Costa