A Coherence-Based Approach for Tracking Waves in the Solar Corona

We consider the problem of automatically (and robustly) isolating and extracting information about waves and oscillations observed in EUV image sequences of the solar corona with a view to near real-time application to data from the Atmospheric Imaging Array (AIA) on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). We find that a simple coherence / travel-time based approach detects and provides a wealth of information on transverse and longitudinal wave phenomena in the test sequences provided by the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE). The results of the search are "pruned" (based on diagnostic errors) to minimize false-detections such that the remainder provides robust measurements of waves in the solar corona, with the calculated propagation speed allowing automated distinction between various wave modes. In this paper we discuss the technique, present results on the TRACE test sequences, and describe how our method can be used to automatically process the enormous flow of data (~1Tb/day) that will be provided by SDO/AIA after launch in late 2008.Comment: 34 pages, 16 figures - in press Solar Physic

Siberian Radioheliograph: first results

Regular observations of active processes in the solar atmosphere have been started using the first stage of the multiwave Siberian Radioheliograph (SRH), a T-shaped 48-antenna array with a 4–8 GHz operating frequency range and a 10 MHz instantaneous receiving band. Antennas are mounted on the central antenna posts of the Siberian Solar Radio Telescope. The maximum baseline is 107.4 m, and the angular resolution is up to 70. We present examples of observations of the solar disk at different frequencies, “negative” bursts, and solar flares. The sensitivity to compact sources reaches 0.01 solar flux units (≈10−4 of the total solar flux) with an accumulation time of about 0.3 s. The high sensitivity of SRH enables monitoring of solar activity and allows studying active processes from characteristics of their microwave emission, including faint events, which could not be detected previously