Prospective Out-of-ecliptic White-light Imaging of Interplanetary Corotating Interaction Regions at Solar Maximum

Journal Article · Thu Jul 20 04:00:00 EDT 2017 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/AA7AAA· OSTI ID:22663351

Xiong, Ming; Yang, Liping; Liu, Ying D.; Keiji, Hayashi; Li, Huichao ^[1]; Davies, Jackie A.; Harrison, Richard A. ^[2]; Li, Bo; Xia, Lidong ^[3]

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1. State Key Laboratory of Space Weather, National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (China)
2. RAL Space, STFC-Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Campus, Didcot (United Kingdom)
3. Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Optical Astronomy and Solar-Terrestrial Environment, Institute of Space Sciences, Shandong University, Weihai (China)

Interplanetary corotating interaction regions (CIRs) can be remotely imaged in white light (WL), as demonstrated by the Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI) on board the Coriolis spacecraft and Heliospheric Imagers (HIs) on board the twin Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory ( STEREO ) spacecraft. The interplanetary WL intensity, due to Thomson scattering of incident sunlight by free electrons, is jointly determined by the 3D distribution of electron number density and line-of-sight (LOS) weighting factors of the Thomson-scattering geometry. The 2D radiance patterns of CIRs in WL sky maps look very different from different 3D viewpoints. Because of the in-ecliptic locations of both the STEREO and Coriolis spacecraft, the longitudinal dimension of interplanetary CIRs has, up to now, always been integrated in WL imagery. To synthesize the WL radiance patterns of CIRs from an out-of-ecliptic (OOE) vantage point, we perform forward magnetohydrodynamic modeling of the 3D inner heliosphere during Carrington Rotation CR1967 at solar maximum. The mixing effects associated with viewing 3D CIRs are significantly minimized from an OOE viewpoint. Our forward modeling results demonstrate that OOE WL imaging from a latitude greater than 60° can (1) enable the garden-hose spiral morphology of CIRs to be readily resolved, (2) enable multiple coexisting CIRs to be differentiated, and (3) enable the continuous tracing of any interplanetary CIR back toward its coronal source. In particular, an OOE view in WL can reveal where nascent CIRs are formed in the extended corona and how these CIRs develop in interplanetary space. Therefore, a panoramic view from a suite of wide-field WL imagers in a solar polar orbit would be invaluable in unambiguously resolving the large-scale longitudinal structure of CIRs in the 3D inner heliosphere.

• OSTI ID: 22663351
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 844; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
DISTRIBUTION
HELIOSPHERE
INTERACTIONS
INTERPLANETARY SPACE
MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMICS
MASS
MIXING
SIMULATION
SOLAR WIND
SPACE VEHICLES
SUN
THOMSON SCATTERING
VISIBLE RADIATION