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Large solar eruptions can potentially harm modern civilization in several different ways. Events such as large solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that lead to solar particle acceleration, can adversely affect the near-earth environment, degrade high frequency (HF) radio communications, incapacitate satellites, expose airline passengers to elevated radiation levels and even endanger life in outer space. Therefore, predicting and monitoring such events is an important task for the community. Solar Energetic Particles are rare events that involve protons, electrons and heavy ions accelerated to high energies (up to tens of GeV while the fastest ones can accelerate to speeds of up to 80% of the speed of light) by two solar processes (Reames, 2013), the energization at a solar flare site or the shock waves associated with Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). Solar charged particles are accelerated in flares or CME shock waves (Wild et al., 1963) and travel preferentially along the interplanetary magnetic field to their detection point in space (McCracken & Ness, 1966).The study of solar energetic particle (SEP) events is a relatively recent science as the identification of the first event took place on 28 February 1942(Forbush, 1946. Observations of solar proton events (subset of solar energetic particle events) were made using ground-based instruments that detected ionization, neutrons, or radio disturbances caused by them. The largest solar proton event recorded using these modern techniques (particles exceeded 15 GeV at the top of the atmosphere) was on the 23rd of February 1956. In the mid-1960s spacecraft were deployed that began directly measuring solar proton events. This was also the time when the first flare was associated with an SEP event (Shea & Smart, 1995).

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Sometimes the proverb "one man's trash is another man's treasure" is also apt in science, as that which is considered noise in one scientific enquiry might be found to be insightful data in another. This has lately been observed in the field of heliophysics.Early after its launch, the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory mission team observed that an unusually high number of spacecraft-related "debris" were being detected by its coronographic instruments (SECCHI suite