Speaker
Description
Our current understanding of coronal mass ejections, as well as other solar events in interplanetary space, is well-developed to forecast the effects on Earth. However, it is still insufficient in its ability to predict the evolution of these events with a high degree of accuracy. Considering that a major space weather event could put crucial technologies at risk, predicting the severity of such events is of great importance to the space weather community.
Interplanetary scintillation (IPS) is a phenomenon which causes sufficiently small radio sources to “twinkle” in the solar wind. Since its discovery in the mid-1960s, it has been developed as a powerful astrophysical tool, both for studying compact (<1 arcsecond size) objects, and for studying the solar wind.
In the last few years, we have breathed new life into this old technique, adapting it for modern low-frequency instruments such as the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). The key advance we have made is to exploit the enormous field of view of the MWA. This allows us to monitor all IPS sources across a field of view 30 degrees across, leading to an unprecedented density of measurements. A recently completed survey of IPS sources in the sky above the MWA has become the basis of this work.
We have conducted a blind search of 49 days of MWA IPS observations from mid-2019, with overlapping daily observations approximately East and South-East of the Sun at an elongation of 30 degrees. This search has revealed several interesting transient features characterised by higher than usual scintillation levels (in spite of the observations being taken at solar minimum). None have (yet) been linked to any known solar events. However, one solar wind enhancement is captured in two observations several hours apart, allowing the plane-of-sky velocity to be inferred.
| Presentation length | Short - 15 minutes |
|---|---|
| Keynote presentation | No |
