TY - JOUR
T1 - Plasma Composition Measurements in an Active Region from Solar Orbiter/SPICE and Hinode/EIS
AU - Brooks, David H.
AU - Janvier, Miho
AU - Baker, Deborah
AU - Warren, Harry P.
AU - Auchère, Frédéric
AU - Carlsson, Mats
AU - Fludra, Andrzej
AU - Hassler, Don
AU - Peter, Hardi
AU - Müller, Daniel
AU - Williams, David
AU - Cuadrado, Regina Aznar
AU - Barczynski, Krzysztof
AU - Buchlin, Eric
AU - Caldwell, Martin
AU - Fredvik, Terje
AU - Giunta, Alessandra
AU - Grundy, Tim
AU - Guest, Steve
AU - Haberreiter, Margit
AU - Harra, Louise
AU - Leeks, Sarah
AU - Parenti, Susanna
AU - Pelouze, Gabriel
AU - Plowman, Joseph
AU - Schmutz, Werner
AU - Schuehle, Udo
AU - Sidher, Sunil
AU - Teriaca, Luca
AU - Thompson, William T.
AU - Young, Peter R.
N1 - Funding information: The work of D.H.B. and H.P.W. was funded by the NASA Hinode program. This work was supported by CNES and S.P. acknowledges funding by the CNES through the MEDOC data and operations center. D.B. is funded under STFC consolidated grant No. ST/S000240/1. Solar Orbiter is a mission of international cooperation between ESA and NASA, operated by ESA. The development of SPICE has been funded by ESA member states and ESA. It was built and is operated by a multinational consortium of research institutes supported by their respective funding agencies: STFC RAL (UKSA, hardware lead), IAS (CNES, operations lead), GSFC (NASA), MPS (DLR), PMOD/WRC (Swiss Space Office), SwRI (NASA), and UiO (Norwegian Space Agency). The EUI images are courtesy of ESA/Solar Orbiter/EUI. Hinode is a Japanese mission developed and launched by ISAS/JAXA, with NAOJ as domestic partner and NASA and STFC (UK) as international partners. It is operated by these agencies in cooperation with ESA and NSC (Norway). The AIA images are courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams.
PY - 2022/11/1
Y1 - 2022/11/1
N2 - A key goal of the Solar Orbiter mission is to connect elemental abundance measurements of the solar wind enveloping the spacecraft with extreme-UV (EUV) spectroscopic observations of their solar sources, but this is not an easy exercise. Observations from previous missions have revealed a highly complex picture of spatial and temporal variations of elemental abundances in the solar corona. We have used coordinated observations from Hinode and Solar Orbiter to attempt new abundance measurements with the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument, and benchmark them against standard analyses from the EUV Imaging Spectrometer (EIS). We use observations of several solar features in active region (AR) 12781 taken from an Earth-facing view by EIS on 2020 November 10, and SPICE data obtained one week later on 2020 November 17, when the AR had rotated into the Solar Orbiter field of view. We identify a range of spectral lines that are useful for determining the transition region and low-coronal-temperature structure with SPICE, and demonstrate that SPICE measurements are able to differentiate between photospheric and coronal magnesium/neon abundances. The combination of SPICE and EIS is able to establish the atmospheric composition structure of a fan loop/outflow area at the AR edge. We also discuss the problem of resolving the degree of elemental fractionation with SPICE, which is more challenging without further constraints on the temperature structure, and comment on what that can tell us about the sources of the solar wind and solar energetic particles.
AB - A key goal of the Solar Orbiter mission is to connect elemental abundance measurements of the solar wind enveloping the spacecraft with extreme-UV (EUV) spectroscopic observations of their solar sources, but this is not an easy exercise. Observations from previous missions have revealed a highly complex picture of spatial and temporal variations of elemental abundances in the solar corona. We have used coordinated observations from Hinode and Solar Orbiter to attempt new abundance measurements with the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument, and benchmark them against standard analyses from the EUV Imaging Spectrometer (EIS). We use observations of several solar features in active region (AR) 12781 taken from an Earth-facing view by EIS on 2020 November 10, and SPICE data obtained one week later on 2020 November 17, when the AR had rotated into the Solar Orbiter field of view. We identify a range of spectral lines that are useful for determining the transition region and low-coronal-temperature structure with SPICE, and demonstrate that SPICE measurements are able to differentiate between photospheric and coronal magnesium/neon abundances. The combination of SPICE and EIS is able to establish the atmospheric composition structure of a fan loop/outflow area at the AR edge. We also discuss the problem of resolving the degree of elemental fractionation with SPICE, which is more challenging without further constraints on the temperature structure, and comment on what that can tell us about the sources of the solar wind and solar energetic particles.
U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/ac9b0b
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/ac9b0b
M3 - Article
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 940
SP - 1
EP - 13
JO - The Astrophysical Journal
JF - The Astrophysical Journal
IS - 1
M1 - 66
ER -