CME Origins and Propagation: Importance of the Polar Perspective

Abstract

This paper describes the importance of out-of-ecliptic imaging from a polar or nearpolar vantage, to the science of coronal mass ejection origins and propagation. In particular, imaging CMEs from only in or near the ecliptic plane limits understanding of their longitudinal structure and extent, and many other aspects of their formation and propagation including the development and release of the flux ropes that drive the strongest CMEs, and the bidirectional effects between CME propagation and the surrounding corona. Polar-vantage imaging is needed to resolve many current mysteries at the heart of heliophysics. Near-Sun imaging of the magnetic field and coronal EUV emission track interaction between CME onset and the surrounding corona and address outstanding questions of CME formation and early propagation. Coronal and heliospheric polar-vantage imaging is critical to outstanding problems of CME launch, acceleration, evolution, and deflection, which are major sticking points both for solar and heliospheric physics and for the applied science of space weather forecasting.

On the Mesoscale Structure of Coronal Mass Ejections at Mercury’s Orbit: BepiColombo and Parker Solar Probe Observations

“…First of all, we remark on the importance of improving upon the available remote-sensing observations for trajectory and size determination of CMEs, since in situ measurements can show some prominent variability over short spatial scales. This could be achieved by increasing the number of operational telescopes in space and/or by observing the Sun and its environment from novel viewpoints, such as from outside the ecliptic plane (e.g., Gibson et al 2018;Palmerio et al 2023a;DeForest et al 2023;Howard et al 2023). From a modeling and forecasting perspective, we highlight the importance of considering "swarms" of virtual spacecraft (around Earth or the target body of interest) when generating predictions, with separations of the synthetic probes of even as little as 5°in nonradial distance to properly account for uncertainties in the physical processes that are being simulated as well as in the determination of CME input parameters from observations (e.g., Scolini et al 2019;Asvestari et al 2021;Palmerio et al 2023b;Maharana et al 2023).…”