Determination of the 3D Trajectory of Coronal Mass Ejections using Stereoscopy

Vahab Pournaghshband and Paulette Liewer

Abstract

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are powerful eruptions that can blow up to ten billion tons of the Sun's atmosphere into interplanetary space. Major CMEs which impact the Earth are capable of creating major disturbances in the outer atmosphere, causing geomagnetic storms and interruptions to communications systems. Identifying those CMEs that will hit the Earth, which appears as “Halo events” in coronagraph images, enables us to significantly reduce the potential damages caused by CMEs. NASA’s two-spacecraft STEREO mission, launch in October of 2006, is taking time series stereoscopic image pairs of CMEs. Prior to launch, we developed and implemented a time efficient algorithm that intelligently detects and tracks the CMEs on the stereo images taken by STEREO. We have then tested our software on six synthetic stereo image sets created by our collaborator. By applying the implemented program to data received by STEREO, Halo events could be predicted early enough to take necessary actions in order to reduce CMEs’ severe damages.