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PROBA2 Science Working Team Meeting 13

PROBA2 Science Working Team Meeting 13 Minutes

28 June 2016
Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium & Webex

The 13th PROBA2 Science Working Team (SWT) meeting was held on Tuesday June 28, 2016 from 15:00 to 18:00 central european time. This year the SWT tested a new innovative method for holding these meetings, using video conferencing! So the meeting was hosted at ROB and on the ROB Webex system. The initial announcements and meeting agenda can be found here and here

Meeting Agenda

Mission Talks

Welcome - M.J. West and E. D'Huys (ROB)

Mission Status - M.J. West (ROB)

  • The PROBA2 mission is confirmed to the end of 2018 and a request for a mission extension through 2020 is currently being prepared.
  • Data products are continuously improved and a major upgrade of the P2SC software is in preparation.
  • Much effort is put into special campaigns, celestial events, collaborations and outreach.

LYRA Status - M. Dominique (ROB)

  • LYRA is performing nominally.
  • All LYRA data have been reprocessed to include the new dark current correction.
  • A LYRA-based flare list was compiled based on an enhanced flare detection algorithm.
  • Ongoing research exploiting LYRA data includes solar eclipses and mid-term periodicities.

SWAP Status - E. D'Huys (ROB)

  • SWAP's performance is nominal. No influence on the instrument was observed after the COGEX experiments.
  • Carrington Rotation Movies are now produced routinely and are available for all past Carrington rotations for which there are SWAP data.
  • Special campaigns were organized for celestial events and a collaboration on calibration has been initiated with the GOES-R/SUVI team.

Mission Extension at ESA Science Directorate - J. Zender (ESA/ESTEC)

  • We plan to request a confirmation for the continuation of PROBA2 operations for 2017-2018 and an extension for 2019-2020.
  • The PROBA2 team made an official request for the mission extension to the SWT.
  • The attendees of the SWT have confirmed they want this extension and agree wih the proposal that D. berghmans will present the PROBA2 case at ESTEC.

Guest Speakers

Tracking CME-driven shocks using radio instruments - V. Krupar (Imperial College London, UK)

V. Krupar studied a CME on 29 November 2013 combining white light, radio and plasma observations from 4 different vantage points, which resulted in the first radio triangulation of an interplanetary type II burst detected by 2 identical receivers. The fact that the triangulated radio bursts are in agreement with the white-light CME reconstruction lead to the conclusion that the radio emission arises from the flanks of the CME. In a follow-up of this study, SWAP observations will be combined with ground-based high-frequency measurements to associate these radio signatures with the coronal structures seen in SWAP's large FOV.

The discovery of a current sheet in Earth's ionosphere - T. Katsiyannis (ROB)

T. Katsiyannis showed LYRA detections of short, strong, bursts that do not directly correlate with solar coronal events, nor with pointing of the instrument to Earth's upper atmosphere. However, these bursts do correlate well with instances of high Ap index on the surface of the Earth and with the crossing by the satellite of the L=6 shell. This presentation highlighted several properties of these detections, including their dependency on various space weather indexes (Ap, Dst, ..), their geographical distribution, and a dawn/dusk asymmetry. Very similar detections were recently made by the Energetic Particles Telescope (EPT) on board the PROBA-V micro-satellite, thereby establishing the identification of the detections as relativistic electrons in the 2.4-8 MeV energy range.

Application of CACTus on SDO - SWAP images and dynamics of coronal funnels - Dipankar Banerjee and Vaibhav Pant (IAS, India)

D. Banerjee and V. Pant have reworked the CACTus CME detection algorithm to detect CME ridges in SWAP and AIA EUV images instead of white light coronagraph images. They have also studied the dynamics of a coronal funnel and the changes in the fine coronal loops that are observed, which indicate reconnection at larger heights. Additionally, they found several upflows that are visible in SWAP observations for more than 2 Carrington rotations. This study will focus further on a fast magnetosonic wave that is observed to propagate along the coronal funnel and which can be used for plasma diagnostics.

Examining the Mass of Filaments and Eruptions using PROBA-2/SWAP - Jack Carlyle (Oslo Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, Norway)

J. Carlyle is developing a technique to determine the mass of eruptive filament material in EUV observations. This method was originally developed for AIA observations, but this presentation demonstrated the applicability of this method to SWAP data as well. A thorough calibration with the mass calculations obtained with AIA will be performed to improve the accuracy of the SWAP results and more eruptions will be studied in detail.

Soft X-ray quasi-periodic pulsations observed during the impulsive and decay phases of solar flares - Laura Hayes (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)

L. Hayes used LYRA data to perform a multi-instrument study of quasi-periodic pulsations in solar flares. These QPPs are oscillatory signatures observed in X-ray emission with characteristic periods of 1s to several minutes. A case study on an X1 event revealed co-existent QPPs across 10 wavebands on 5 different instruments with characteristic timescales above 20s. Further work will continue this multi-wavelength analysis with particular focus on the impulsive and decay phases of the flares. LYRA is important here as a proxy for GOES and to correctly identify which pulsations are 'real', that is, of solar origin.

The Solar Ultraviolet Imager on GOES-R: Science and Space Weather - Dan Seaton (CIRES/NOAA, USA)

D. Seaton introduced the SUVI instrument that will be mounted on the GOES-R spacecraft, scheduled to launch later this year into a geostationary orbit. SUVI is an EUV imager with a FOV similar to SWAP's and will produce solar images in 6 passbands. Next to its space weather purpose, SUVI will be used to study solar eruptions and the large scale EUV corona. An extensive intercalibration effort between SWAP, SUVI and GOES/EXIS is ongoing in the context of the GOES-R Visiting Scientist Program.

 

Attendees

  • Bram Bourgoignie, P2SC, ROB, Belgium
  • David Berghmans, P2SC, ROB, Belgium
  • Elena Podladchikova, ROB, Belgium
  • Elke D'Huys, P2SC, ROB, Belgium
  • Emil Kraaikamp, ROB, Belgium
  • Laurent Dolla, ROB, Belgium
  • Marie Dominique, P2SC, ROB, Belgium
  • Marilena Mierla, ROB, Belgium
  • Matthew West, P2SC, ROB, Belgium
  • Thanassis Katsiyannis, P2SC, ROB, Belgium
  • Ingolf Dammash, P2SC, ROB, Belgium
  • Robbe Vansintjan, P2SC, ROB, Belgium
  • Sergei Shestov, ROB, Belgium
  • Jasmina Magdalenic, ROB, Belgium
  • Serge Koutchmy, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, France
  • Jack Carlyle, Oslo Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, Norway
  • Vratislav Krupar, Imperial college London, UK
  • Dipankar Bannerjee, IAS, India
  • Daniel Seaton, CIRES / NOAA, USA
  • Janet Machol, CIRES / NOAA, USA
  • Joe Zender, ESTEC, NL
  • Adam Kobelski NASA MSFC, USA
  • Laura Hayes, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
  • Mark Cheung, Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab, USA
  • Nariaki Nitta, Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab, USA
  • Nat Gopalswamy, NASA GSFC, USA
  • Michael Kirk, NASA GSFC, USA
  • Barbara Thompson, NASA GSFC, USA
  • Jack Ireland, NASA GSFC, USA