Abstract
Context. Solar Orbiter, the new-generation mission dedicated to solar and heliospheric exploration, was successfully launched on February 10, 2020, 04:03 UTC from Cape Canaveral. During its first perihelion passage in June 2020, two successive interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs), propagating along the heliospheric current sheet (HCS), impacted the spacecraft. Aims. This paper addresses the investigation of the ICMEs encountered by Solar Orbiter on June 7-8, 2020, from both an observational and a modeling perspective. The aim is to provide a full description of those events, their mutual interaction, and their coupling with the ambient solar wind and the HCS. Methods. Data acquired by the MAG magnetometer, the Energetic Particle Detector suite, and the Radio and Plasma Waves instrument are used to provide information on the ICMEs' magnetic topology configuration, their magnetic connectivity to the Sun, and insights into the heliospheric plasma environment where they travel, respectively. On the modeling side, the Heliospheric Upwind eXtrapolation model, the 3D COronal Rope Ejection technique, and the EUropean Heliospheric FORecasting Information Asset (EUHFORIA) tool are used to complement Solar Orbiter observations of the ambient solar wind and ICMEs, and to simulate the evolution and interaction of the ejecta in the inner heliosphere, respectively. Results. Both data analysis and numerical simulations indicate that the passage of two distinct, dynamically and magnetically interacting (via magnetic reconnection processes) ICMEs at Solar Orbiter is a possible scenario, supported by the numerous similarities between EUHFORIA time series at Solar Orbiter and Solar Orbiter data. Conclusions. The combination of in situ measurements and numerical simulations (together with remote sensing observations of the corona and inner heliosphere) will significantly lead to a deeper understanding of the physical processes occurring during the CME-CME interaction.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | A5 |
| Journal | Astronomy and Astrophysics |
| Volume | 656 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2021 |
Keywords
- Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)
- Solar wind
- Solar-terrestrial relations
- Sun: coronal mass ejections (CMEs)
- Sun: evolution
- Sun: heliosphere
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Space and Planetary Science
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In: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol. 656, A5, 01.12.2021.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Study of two interacting interplanetary coronal mass ejections encountered by Solar Orbiter during its first perihelion passage
T2 - Observations and modeling
AU - Telloni, D.
AU - Scolini, C.
AU - Möstl, C.
AU - Zank, G. P.
AU - Zhao, L. L.
AU - Weiss, A. J.
AU - Reiss, M. A.
AU - Laker, R.
AU - Perrone, D.
AU - Khotyaintsev, Y.
AU - Steinvall, K.
AU - Sorriso-Valvo, L.
AU - Horbury, T. S.
AU - Wimmer-Schweingruber, R. F.
AU - Bruno, R.
AU - D'amicis, R.
AU - De Marco, R.
AU - Jagarlamudi, V. K.
AU - Carbone, F.
AU - Marino, R.
AU - Stangalini, M.
AU - Nakanotani, M.
AU - Adhikari, L.
AU - Liang, H.
AU - Woodham, L. D.
AU - Davies, E. E.
AU - Hietala, H.
AU - Perri, S.
AU - Gómez-Herrero, R.
AU - Rodríguez-Pacheco, J.
AU - Antonucci, E.
AU - Romoli, M.
AU - Fineschi, S.
AU - Maksimovic, M.
AU - Souček, J.
AU - Chust, T.
AU - Kretzschmar, M.
AU - Vecchio, A.
AU - Müller, D.
AU - Zouganelis, I.
AU - Winslow, R. M.
AU - Giordano, S.
AU - Mancuso, S.
AU - Susino, R.
AU - Ivanovski, S. L.
AU - Messerotti, M.
AU - O'brien, H.
AU - Evans, V.
AU - Angelini, V.
N1 - Funding Information: Acknowledgements. Solar Orbiter is a mission of international cooperation between ESA and NASA, operated by ESA. D.T. and R.D.M. were partially supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) under contract 2018-30-HH.0. C.S. acknowledges support from the NASA Living With a Star Jack Eddy Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, administered by UCAR’s Cooperative Programs for the Advancement of Earth System Science (CPAESS) under award no. NNX16AK22G, and from the VSC – Flemish Supercomputer Center. C.M., A.J.W., and M.A.R. thank the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): P31521-N27, P31659-N27, J4160-N27. G.P.Z., L.L.Z., M.N., L.A., and H.L. acknowledge the partial support of a NASA Parker Solar Probe contract SV4-84017, an NSF EPSCoR RII-Track-1 Cooperative Agreement OIA-1655280, and a NASA IMAP grant through SUB000313/80GSFC19C0027. R.L. was supported by an Imperial College President’s Scholarship. L.S.V. was funded by the Swedish Contingency Agency, grant 2016-2102, and by SNSA, grant86/20. J.R.P and R.G.H. acknowledge the financial support by the Spanish Ministe-rio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades under project PID2019-104863RBI00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. The Solar Orbiter magnetometer was funded by the UK Space Agency (grant ST/T001062/1). The RPW instrument has been designed and funded by CNES, CNRS, the Paris Observatory, the Swedish National Space Agency, ESA-PRODEX and all the participating institutes. EPD is led out of the Universidad de Alcalá and is funded by the Spanish Min-isterio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades under grants FEDER/MCIU – Agencia Estatal de Investigación/Projects ESP2105-68266-R and ESP2017-88436-R. STEP and EPT are part of EPD and were developed at the University of Kiel (Germany) and funded by the German Space Agency (DLR) numbers 50OT0901, 50OT1202, 50OT1702, and 50OT2002. Solar Orbiter data were downloaded from the Solar Orbiter Archive (http://soar.esac.esa.int/ soar/) website. EUHFORIA is developed as a joint effort between the University of Helsinki and KU Leuven. The full validation of solar wind and CME modeling is being performed within the BRAIN-be CCSOM (Constraining CMEs and Shocks by Observations and Modeling throughout the inner heliosphere) project (http://www.sidc.be/ccsom/) and BRAIN-be SWIM (Solar WInd Modeling with EUHFORIA for the new heliospheric missions) project. The simulations were carried out at the VSC – Flemish Supercomputer Center, funded by the Hercules foundation and the Flemish Government – Department EWI. The use of JHelioviewer (https://www.jhelioviewer.org) (Müller et al. 2017) to visualize SDO/AIA, SDO/HMI, SOHO/LASCO, STEREO-A/EUVI, and STEREO-A/COR1 images is acknowledged. The HCS reconstruction has made use of the open source and free community-developed space physics packages HelioPy (https://zenodo.org/record/3739114#.YAlh1S1aa6s), Pfsspy (Stansby et al. 2020) and SpiceyPy (Annex et al. 2020), which builds on the SPICE toolkit (Acton et al. 2018). The Referee is credited with having suggested an alternative and plausible interpretation of the observational results. D.T. wishes to thank his father for still being next to him. Funding Information: the Advancement of Earth System Science (CPAESS) under award no. NNX16AK22G, and from the VSC - Flemish Supercomputer Center. C.M., A.J.W., and M.A.R. thank the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): P31521- N27, P31659-N27, J4160-N27. Publisher Copyright: © ESO 2021.
PY - 2021/12/1
Y1 - 2021/12/1
N2 - Context. Solar Orbiter, the new-generation mission dedicated to solar and heliospheric exploration, was successfully launched on February 10, 2020, 04:03 UTC from Cape Canaveral. During its first perihelion passage in June 2020, two successive interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs), propagating along the heliospheric current sheet (HCS), impacted the spacecraft. Aims. This paper addresses the investigation of the ICMEs encountered by Solar Orbiter on June 7-8, 2020, from both an observational and a modeling perspective. The aim is to provide a full description of those events, their mutual interaction, and their coupling with the ambient solar wind and the HCS. Methods. Data acquired by the MAG magnetometer, the Energetic Particle Detector suite, and the Radio and Plasma Waves instrument are used to provide information on the ICMEs' magnetic topology configuration, their magnetic connectivity to the Sun, and insights into the heliospheric plasma environment where they travel, respectively. On the modeling side, the Heliospheric Upwind eXtrapolation model, the 3D COronal Rope Ejection technique, and the EUropean Heliospheric FORecasting Information Asset (EUHFORIA) tool are used to complement Solar Orbiter observations of the ambient solar wind and ICMEs, and to simulate the evolution and interaction of the ejecta in the inner heliosphere, respectively. Results. Both data analysis and numerical simulations indicate that the passage of two distinct, dynamically and magnetically interacting (via magnetic reconnection processes) ICMEs at Solar Orbiter is a possible scenario, supported by the numerous similarities between EUHFORIA time series at Solar Orbiter and Solar Orbiter data. Conclusions. The combination of in situ measurements and numerical simulations (together with remote sensing observations of the corona and inner heliosphere) will significantly lead to a deeper understanding of the physical processes occurring during the CME-CME interaction.
AB - Context. Solar Orbiter, the new-generation mission dedicated to solar and heliospheric exploration, was successfully launched on February 10, 2020, 04:03 UTC from Cape Canaveral. During its first perihelion passage in June 2020, two successive interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs), propagating along the heliospheric current sheet (HCS), impacted the spacecraft. Aims. This paper addresses the investigation of the ICMEs encountered by Solar Orbiter on June 7-8, 2020, from both an observational and a modeling perspective. The aim is to provide a full description of those events, their mutual interaction, and their coupling with the ambient solar wind and the HCS. Methods. Data acquired by the MAG magnetometer, the Energetic Particle Detector suite, and the Radio and Plasma Waves instrument are used to provide information on the ICMEs' magnetic topology configuration, their magnetic connectivity to the Sun, and insights into the heliospheric plasma environment where they travel, respectively. On the modeling side, the Heliospheric Upwind eXtrapolation model, the 3D COronal Rope Ejection technique, and the EUropean Heliospheric FORecasting Information Asset (EUHFORIA) tool are used to complement Solar Orbiter observations of the ambient solar wind and ICMEs, and to simulate the evolution and interaction of the ejecta in the inner heliosphere, respectively. Results. Both data analysis and numerical simulations indicate that the passage of two distinct, dynamically and magnetically interacting (via magnetic reconnection processes) ICMEs at Solar Orbiter is a possible scenario, supported by the numerous similarities between EUHFORIA time series at Solar Orbiter and Solar Orbiter data. Conclusions. The combination of in situ measurements and numerical simulations (together with remote sensing observations of the corona and inner heliosphere) will significantly lead to a deeper understanding of the physical processes occurring during the CME-CME interaction.
KW - Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)
KW - Solar wind
KW - Solar-terrestrial relations
KW - Sun: coronal mass ejections (CMEs)
KW - Sun: evolution
KW - Sun: heliosphere
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85113475602&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1051/0004-6361/202140648
DO - 10.1051/0004-6361/202140648
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85113475602
SN - 0004-6361
VL - 656
JO - Astronomy and Astrophysics
JF - Astronomy and Astrophysics
M1 - A5
ER -