M. L. Kaiser’s research while affiliated with NASA Johnson Space Center and other places

At the lowest radio frequencies (≤30 MHz), the Earth's ionosphere transmits poorly or not at all. This relatively unexplored region of the electromagnetic spectrum is thus an area where high resolution, high sensitivity observations can open a new window for astronomical investigations. Also, extending observations down to very low frequencies brings astronomy to a fundamental physical limit where the Milky Way becomes optically thick over relatively short path lengths due to diffuse free-free absorption.

The concept is developed for a scientific space mission to survey the entire sky and to image individual sources at frequencies between 1.5 and 26.3 MHz, a frequency range over which the Earth's ionosphere transmits poorly or not at all. The required technology already exists and there are many important scientific goals which can be attained with high sensitivity, high resolution space observations at the lowest frequencies available to astronomy from within the absorbing interstellar plasma of our own Galaxy.

The vulnerability of technology on which present society relies demands that a solar event, its time of arrival at Earth, and its degree of geoeffectiveness be promptly forecasted. Motivated by improving predictions of arrival times at Earth of shocks driven by coronal mass ejections (CMEs), we have analyzed 71 Earth-directed events in different stages of their propagation. The study is primarily based on approximated locations of interplanetary (IP) shocks derived from type II radio emissions detected by the Wind/WAVES experiment during 1997-2007. Distance-time diagrams resulting from the combination of white-light corona, IP type II radio, and in situ data lead to the formulation of descriptive profiles of each CME's journey toward Earth. Furthermore, two different methods to track and predict the location of CME-driven IP shocks are presented. The linear method, solely based on Wind/WAVES data, arises after key modifications to a pre-existing technique that linearly projects the drifting low-frequency type II emissions to 1 AU. This upgraded method improves forecasts of shock arrival time by almost 50%. The second predictive method is proposed on the basis of information derived from the descriptive profiles, and relies on a single CME height-time point and on low-frequency type II radio emissions to obtain an approximate value of the shock arrival time at Earth. In addition, we discuss results on CME-radio emission associations, characteristics of IP propagation, and the relative success of the forecasting methods.

We consider the approach to simultaneous (synchronous) solar observations of radio emission by using the STEREO-WAVES instruments (frequency range 0.125–16 MHz) and the largest ground-based low-frequency radio telescope. We illustrate it by the UTR-2 radio telescope implementation (10–30 MHz). The antenna system of the radio telescope is a T-shape-like array of broadband dipoles and is located near the village Grakovo in the Kharkiv region (Ukraine). The third observation point on the ground in addition to two space-based ones improves the space-mission performance capabilities for the determination of radio-emission source directivity. The observational results from the high sensitivity antenna UTR-2 are particularly useful for analysis of STEREO data in the condition of weak event appearances during solar activity minima. In order to improve the accuracy of flux density measurements, we also provide simultaneous observations with a large part of the UTR-2 radio telescope array and its single dipole close to the STEREO-WAVES antennas in sensitivity. This concept has been studied by comparing the STEREO data with ground-based records from 2007–2011 and shown to be effective. The capabilities will be useful in the implementation of new instruments (LOFAR, LWA, MWA, etc.) and during the future Solar Orbiter mission.

A coronal mass ejection (CME) associated with a type II burst and originating close to the center of the solar disk typically results in a shock at Earth in 2-3 days and hence can be used to predict shock arrival at Earth. However, a significant fraction (about 28%) of such CMEs producing type II bursts were not associated with shocks at Earth. We examined a set of 21 type II bursts observed by the Wind/WAVES experiment at decameter-hectometric (DH) wavelengths that had CME sources very close to the disk center (within a central meridian distance of 30 degrees), but did not have a shock at Earth. We find that the near-Sun speeds of these CMEs average to ~644 km/s, only slightly higher than the average speed of CMEs associated with radio-quiet shocks. However, the fraction of halo CMEs is only ~30%, compared to 54% for the radio-quiet shocks and 91% for all radio-loud shocks. We conclude that the disk-center radio-loud CMEs with no shocks at 1 AU are generally of lower energy and they drive shocks only close to the Sun and dissipate before arriving at Earth. There is also evidence for other possible processes that lead to the lack of shock at 1 AU: (i) overtaking CME shocks merge and one observes a single shock at Earth, and (ii) deflection by nearby coronal holes can push the shocks away from the Sun-Earth line, such that Earth misses these shocks. The probability of observing a shock at 1 AU increases rapidly above 60% when the CME speed exceeds 1000 km/s and when the type II bursts propagate to frequencies below 1 MHz.

The space weather field has thriven in the past decades, mainly given the proliferation of space missions devoted to study the Sun and its relations to Earth. In addition, the high dependence on technology developed by society demands that a solar event, its time of arrival at Earth, and its degree of geoeffectiveness can be promptly forecasted. The accurate prediction of a CME-driven shock arrival time at Earth is therefore challenging and crucial, so as to take emergency measures when required. In this direction, we have studied 90 Earth-directed events in different stages of their propagation from Sun to Earth. A descriptive model was derived from CME height-time information from SOHO/LASCO coronagraph data, interplanetary shock approximate locations derived from Type II radio emissions detected by Wind/WAVES, and shock time of arrival at L1 as seen in-situ by the ACE and/or Wind spacecraft. The descriptive model provided a general overview of CME-driven shocks kinematics, allowing the determination of typical propagation profiles and constrains on the main parameters. On the basis of these, a predictive model was formulated, which relies on CME and low-frequency type II radio emissions. We discuss results on CME-radio emission associations, characteristics of the propagation in the interplanetary medium, and the success of the predictive model to forecast the arrival times of shocks at Earth.

The distribution of dust in the ecliptic plane between 0.96 and 1.04 au has been inferred from impacts on the two Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft through observation of secondary particle trails and unexpected off-points in the heliospheric imager (HI) cameras. This study made use of analysis carried out by members of a distributed web-based citizen science project Solar Stormwatch. A comparison between observations of the brightest particle trails and a survey of fainter trails shows consistent distributions. While there is no obvious correlation between this distribution and the occurrence of individual meteor streams at Earth, there are some broad longitudinal features in these distributions that are also observed in sources of the sporadic meteor population. The different position of the HI instrument on the two STEREO spacecraft leads to each sampling different populations of dust particles. The asymmetry in the number of trails seen by each spacecraft and the fact that there are many more unexpected off-points in the HI-B than in HI-A indicates that the majority of impacts are coming from the apex direction. For impacts causing off-points in the HI-B camera, these dust particles are estimated to have masses in excess of 10−17 kg with radii exceeding 0.1 μm. For off-points observed in the HI-A images, which can only have been caused by particles travelling from the anti-apex direction, the distribution is consistent with that of secondary ‘storm’ trails observed by HI-B, providing evidence that these trails also result from impacts with primary particles from an anti-apex source. Investigating the mass distribution for the off-points of both HI-A and HI-B, it is apparent that the differential mass index of particles from the apex direction (causing off-points in HI-B) is consistently above 2. This indicates that the majority of the mass is within the smaller particles of this population. In contrast, the differential mass index of particles from the anti-apex direction (causing off-points in HI-A) is consistently below 2, indicating that the majority of the mass is to be found in larger particles of this distribution.

The Large-Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) on board SOHO observed a fast halo coronal mass ejection on 2011 February 15. The STEREO spacecraft were in qudrature with SOHO (STEREO-A ahead of Earth by 87 deg and STEREO-B 94 deg behind Earth), enabling CME measurement using the three spacecraft. The sky-plane speed measured by SOHO/LASCO is closely related to the expansion speed of the CME, while the radial speed was measured by STEREO-A and STEREO-B. In addition, STEREO-A and STEREO-B images measured the width of the CME, which is unknown from Earth view. From the SOHO and STEREO measurements, we confirm the relationship between the expansion speed (Vexp) and radial speed (Vrad) derived previously from geometrical considerations (Gopalswamy et al. 2009): = Vrad = ½ (1 + cot w) Vexp, where w is the half width of the CME. We can also measure the Earthward speed of the CME directly from the STEREO measurements. The travel time to Earth predicted from the Earthward speed using the Empirical Shock Arrival model is 12 hours shorter than the actual travel time obtained from in situ measurements at L1. The primary reason for this discrepancy seems to be the interaction with the two preceding CMEs that slowed down the CME in question. The CME interaction is also confirmed from the radio enhancement observed by Wind/WAVES and STEREO WAVES experiments.