STEREO OBSERVATIONS OF FAST MAGNETOSONIC WAVES IN THE EXTENDED SOLAR CORONA ASSOCIATED WITH EIT/EUV WAVES

Journal Article · Wed Mar 20 04:00:00 EDT 2013 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/766/1/55· OSTI ID:22167560

Kwon, Ryun-Young; Ofman, Leon; Kramar, Maxim ^[1]; Olmedo, Oscar ^[2]; Davila, Joseph M.; Thompson, Barbara J.; Cho, Kyung-Suk ^[3]

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1. Also at Department of Physics, Institute for Astrophysics and Computational Sciences, Catholic University of America, 620 Michigan Avenue, Washington, DC 20064, USA. (United States)
2. NRC Associate, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC 20375, USA. (United States)
3. Also at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Solar Physics Laboratory, Code 671, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA. (United States)

We report white-light observations of a fast magnetosonic wave associated with a coronal mass ejection observed by STEREO/SECCHI/COR1 inner coronagraphs on 2011 August 4. The wave front is observed in the form of density compression passing through various coronal regions such as quiet/active corona, coronal holes, and streamers. Together with measured electron densities determined with STEREO COR1 and Extreme UltraViolet Imager (EUVI) data, we use our kinematic measurements of the wave front to calculate coronal magnetic fields and find that the measured speeds are consistent with characteristic fast magnetosonic speeds in the corona. In addition, the wave front turns out to be the upper coronal counterpart of the EIT wave observed by STEREO EUVI traveling against the solar coronal disk; moreover, stationary fronts of the EIT wave are found to be located at the footpoints of deflected streamers and boundaries of coronal holes, after the wave front in the upper solar corona passes through open magnetic field lines in the streamers. Our findings suggest that the observed EIT wave should be in fact a fast magnetosonic shock/wave traveling in the inhomogeneous solar corona, as part of the fast magnetosonic wave propagating in the extended solar corona.

• OSTI ID: 22167560
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 766; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
COMPRESSION
DENSITY
ELECTRON DENSITY
EXTREME ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION
MAGNETIC FIELDS
MAGNETOACOUSTIC WAVES
SHOCK WAVES
SOLAR CORONA
VISIBLE RADIATION