Abstract. Coronal Mass ejections (CMEs) are enormous eruptions of magnetized plasma expelled from the Sun into the interplanetary space, over the course of hours to days. They can create major disturbances in the interplanetary medium and trigger severe magnetic storms when they collide with the Earth's magnetosphere. It is important to know their real speed, propagation direction and 3-D configuration in order to accurately predict their arrival time at the Earth. Using data from the SECCHI coronagraphs onboard the STEREO mission, which was launched in October 2006, we can infer the propagation direction and the 3-D structure of such events. In this review, we first describe different techniques that were used to model the 3-D configuration of CMEs in the coronagraph field of view (up to 15 R ).Correspondence to: M. Mierla (mmierla@gmail.com) Then, we apply these techniques to different CMEs observed by various coronagraphs. A comparison of results obtained from the application of different reconstruction algorithms is presented and discussed.
We describe here a method to obtain the position of a coronal moving feature in a three-dimensional coordinate system based on height -time measurements applied to STEREO data. By using the height -time diagrams from the two SECCHI-COR1 coronagraphs onboard STEREO, one can easily determine the direction of propagation of a coronal mass ejection (i.e., if the moving plasma is oriented toward or away from the Earth). This method may prove to be a useful tool for space weather forecasting by easily identifying the direction of propagation as well as the real speed of the coronal mass ejections.
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