Long-Term Tracking of Corotating Density Structures Using Heliospheric Imaging
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Published version
Accepted version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The systematic monitoring of the solar wind in high-cadence and high-resolution heliospheric images taken by the Solar-Terrestrial Relation Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft permits the study of the spatial and temporal evolution of variable solar wind flows from the Sun out to 1 AU, and beyond. As part of the EU Framework 7 (FP7) Heliospheric Cataloguing, Analysis and Techniques Service (HELCATS) project, we have generated a catalog listing the properties of 190 corotating structures well-observed in images taken by the Heliospheric Imager (HI) instruments onboard STEREO-A (ST-A). Based on this catalog, we present here one of very few long-term analyses of solar wind structures advected by the background solar wind. We concentrate on the subset of plasma density structures clearly identified inside corotating structures. This analysis confirms that most of the corotating density structures detected by the heliospheric imagers comprises a series of density inhomogeneities advected by the slow solar wind that eventually become entrained by stream interaction regions. We have derived the spatial-temporal evolution of each of these corotating density structures by using a well-established fitting technique. The mean radial propagation speed of the corotating structures is found to be (Formula presented.). Such a low mean value corresponds to the terminal speed of the slow solar wind rather than the speed of stream interfaces, which is typically intermediate between the slow and fast solar wind speeds ((Formula presented.)). Using our fitting technique, we predicted the arrival time of each corotating density structure at different probes in the inner heliosphere. We find that our derived speeds are systematically lower by (Formula presented.) than those measured in situ at the predicted impact times. Moreover, for cases when a stream interaction region is clearly detected in situ at the estimated impact time, we find that our derived speeds are lower than the speed of the stream interface measured in situ by an average of (Formula presented.) at ST-A and (Formula presented.) at STEREO-B (ST-B). We show that the speeds of the corotating density structures derived using our fitting technique track well the long-term variation of the radial speed of the slow solar wind during solar minimum years (2007 – 2008). Furthermore, we demonstrate that these features originate near the coronal neutral line that eventually becomes the heliospheric current sheet.
Date Issued
2016-06-22
Date Acceptance
2016-06-06
Citation
Solar Physics, 2016, 291 (6), pp.1853-1875
ISSN
0038-0938
Publisher
Springer Verlag
Start Page
1853
End Page
1875
Journal / Book Title
Solar Physics
Volume
291
Issue
6
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
License URL
Subjects
Astronomy & Astrophysics
0201 Astronomical And Space Sciences
Publication Status
Published