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CMEchaser, Detecting Line-of-Sight Occultations Due to Coronal Mass Ejections

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Abstract

We present a python-based tool to detect the occultation of back-ground sources by foreground solar coronal mass ejections. The tool takes as input standard celestial coordinates of the source and translates those to the helioprojective plane, and is thus well suited for use with a wide variety of background astronomical sources. This tool provides an easy means to search through a large archival dataset for such crossings and relies on the well-tested AstroPy and SunPy modules.

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Notes

  1. See the appendix for practical notes on the software requirements and usage.

  2. https://cdaw.gsfc.nasa.gov/CME_list/.

  3. http://sidc.oma.be/cactus/.

  4. https://helioviewer.org/.

  5. Here DM is the line integral of the electron density along the LOS. In this case we are concerned only with the value for part of the LOS affected by the CME.

  6. https://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/.

  7. See, e.g., the Sundish project (https://sites.google.com/inaf.it/sundish/).

  8. https://sunpy.org, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3096966.

  9. http://www.astropy.org, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.2556700.

  10. https://www.atnf.csiro.au/research/pulsar/psrcat/.

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Acknowledgements

GS is supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research NWO (TOP2.614.001.602; P.I. - Dr. G. Janssen). CT is supported by a VENI fellowship (016.Veni.192.086) awarded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), and this work is part of the research programme SOLTRACK.

This research utilises SunPy (version greater or equal to 1.0.0)Footnote 8 and AstroPy (version greater or equal to 3.0.5)Footnote 9 community-developed core Python packages for solar (The SunPy Community et al., 2020) and general astronomy (Astropy Collaboration et al., 2013, 2018), respectively.

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  1. ASTRON, The Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, Oude Hoogeveensedijk 4, Dwingeloo, 7991PD, The Netherlands

    Golam Shaifullah, Caterina Tiburzi & Pietro Zucca

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  1. Golam Shaifullah
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Correspondence to Golam Shaifullah.

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Appendix: Practical Notes

Appendix: Practical Notes

Instructions for dowloading and using CMEchaser can be found at https://bitbucket.org/golamshaifullah/cme_chaser/wiki/Home.

The software is a fully python-based code and, to be run, it needs the most common python packages (numpy, scipy, etc.), along with the SunPy and AstroPy modules. We advise running it after having created and activated the CONDA environment as shown on the CMEchaser wiki to avoid issues with missing packages and libraries.

The software can be run in two ways, depending on the background source that the user wants to search the occultation for. If the background object is a pulsar present in the psrcat software,Footnote 10 the user can simply pass the name of the source as referred to the J2000 epoch (e.g. J1022+1001). Alternatively, if the background object is a pulsar missing in the catalogue, or any other source, the user can run the software by supplying the source name, its Galactic latitude and longitude, proper motion in Galactic coordinates and the reference epoch for the astrometric parameters.

To test whether the setting up of CMEchaser was successful, we recommend trying one of the example commands in https://bitbucket.org/golamshaifullah/cme_chaser/wiki/commands_for_star_check.md. These will lead to the identification of position of a known star (i.e. visible in the optical) against the Helioviewer database through the use of a custom CME catalogue myuniv.txt, supplied with the package. Note that, in a real run, the user can supply her or his own customised CME catalogue as a simple text or a file with comma-separated-values with the column header for the CME launch date set to dme, or not parse any catalogue. In this last case, CMEchaser will automatically download and use the CDAW CME catalogue.

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Shaifullah, G., Tiburzi, C. & Zucca, P. CMEchaser, Detecting Line-of-Sight Occultations Due to Coronal Mass Ejections. Sol Phys 295, 136 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-020-01705-0

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