Solar flares are highly energetic events in the Sun’s corona that affect Earth’s space weather. The mechanism that drives the onset of solar flares is unknown, hampering efforts to forecast them, which mostly rely on empirical methods. We present the κ-scheme, a physics-based model to predict large solar flares through a critical condition of magnetohydrodynamic instability, triggered by magnetic reconnection. Analysis of the largest (X-class) flares from 2008 to 2019 (during solar cycle 24) shows that the κ-scheme predicts most imminent large solar flares, with a small number of exceptions for confined flares. We conclude that magnetic twist flux density, close to a magnetic polarity inversion line on the solar surface, determines when and where solar flares may occur and how large they can be.

As we are heading towards the next solar cycle, presumably with a relatively small amplitude, it is of significant interest to reconstruct and describe the past grand minima on the basis of actual observations of the time. The Dalton Minimum is often considered one of the grand minima captured in the coverage of telescopic observations. Nevertheless, the reconstructions of the sunspot group number vary significantly, and the existing butterfly diagrams have a large data gap during the period. This is partially because most long-term observations have remained unexplored in historical archives. Therefore, to improve our understanding on the Dalton Minimum, we have located two series of Thaddäus Derfflinger's observational records (a summary manuscript and logbooks) as well as his Brander's 5.5-feet azimuthal-quadrant preserved in the Kremsmünster Observatory. We have revised the existing Derfflinger's sunspot group number with Waldmeier classification and eliminated all the existing 'spotless days' to remove contaminations from solar meridian Hayakawa et al. (2020) Thaddäus Derfflinger's sunspot observations during

[1] A large-aperture radiotelescope called the Solar Wind Imaging Facility (SWIFT) has been developed at the Toyokawa Observatory of the Solar-Terrestrial Environment Laboratory (STEL), Nagoya University. The SWIFT is dedicated to interplanetary scintillation (IPS) observations of the solar wind at 327 MHz, the same frequency as that of the existing STEL IPS system. The aim of this instrument is to improve the spatial and temporal resolutions of tomographic reconstructions from STEL IPS observations by increasing the number of usable lines of sight within a given time period. The SWIFT consists of a pair of asymmetric cylindrical parabolic reflector antennas with an aperture size of 108 m (N-S) by 19 m (E-W), and a 192-element phased array receiver system which forms a single beam steerable between 60°S and 30°N with respect to the zenith. Since the antenna beam is fixed in the local meridian, IPS observations are taken around the time of meridian transit for each source. The performance of the SWIFT has been tested using preliminary observations for strong discrete sources and diffuse galactic background.

Interplanetary scintillation (IPS) observations made between 1985 and 2013 are used to investigate the north-south (N-S) asymmetry in global distribution of the solar wind speed. The IPS observations clearly demonstrate that the global distribution of the solar wind speed systematically changes with the solar activity. This change is found to closely correlate with that in polar magnetic fields of the Sun, while fast wind data at solar minima systematically deviate from this correlation. The IPS observations show that notable N-S asymmetry of polar solar winds occurs at the solar maxima, and small but significant N-S asymmetry exists at the solar minima. The observed asymmetry at the solar maxima is consistent with the time lag in the reversal of polar magnetic fields between north and south hemispheres. We also find that significant N-S asymmetry of the polar fast wind lasts for the period between Cycles 23 and 24 solar maxima, starting from predominance of the fast wind over the north pole and ending with that over the south pole. The N-S asymmetry revealed from IPS observations is found to be generally consistent with Ulysses observations. We compare IPS observations with magnetic field data of the Sun and find that the ratio of the quadrupole to dipole coefficients exhibits a similar time variation to that of the N-S asymmetry revealed from IPS observations. This suggests that higher-order multipole moments play an important role in determining the N-S asymmetry of the solar wind when the dipole moment weakens.

This paper describes a new "SMART/SDDI Filament Disappearance Catalogue," in which we listed almost all the filament disappearance events that the Solar Dynamics Doppler Imager (SDDI) has observed since its installation on the Solar Magnetic Activity Research Telescope (SMART) in May 2016. Our aim is to build a database that can help predict the occurrence and severity of coronal mass ejections (CMEs). The catalogue contains miscellaneous information associated with filament disappearance such as flare, CME, active region, three-dimensional trajectory of erupting filaments, detection in Interplanetary Scintillation (IPS), occurrence of interplanetary CME (ICME) and Dst index. We also provide statistical information on the catalogue data. The catalogue is available from the following website: https://www.kwasan.kyoto-u.ac.jp/observation/event/sddi-catalogue/.