STIX-MWA Solar Activity

STIX-MWA Activity Monitor

Description

This workflows joins STIX observations with radio telescope data. It helps to find a correlation between a solar flare in x-ray detected by STIX and its radio counterpart detected by MWA telescope.

Parameters

General

The follwoing parameters are mandatory

  • start_time str: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.s UTC ISO start date of the search window. The date must be after January 2021, since STIX has no data before this date. The backend will start searching for flares in STIX data from this date and time on. It doesn't matter if the sun is above or below the horizon then. The default is set to 2024-08-04T01:00:00.0.
  • end_time str: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.s UTC ISO end date of the search window. The date must be after January 2021, since STIX has no data before this date. The backend will search the STIX database for flares up to this point in time. The default is set to 2024-08-04T13:00:00.0.

NOTE: Select only small time ranges, i.e. 1 min. Longer ranges may generate a huge amount of data (up to 10 GB) which may overload the infrastructure.

The following parameters are not used.

  • RA (float), DEC (float): right ascenscion and declination have no meaning for STIX obervations
  • source_name str: Ignored and always set to "Sun"

Query parameters

There are no data products to choose here. The workflow queries the two individual workflows Solar Orbiter STIX and MWA Telescope and displays the spectrogram from the MWA Telescope alongside the light curve from the STIX instrument on Solar Orbiter. Hence, there is only one product type available.

For STIX you can select for which energy ranges you want to get the light curves. STIX has five distinct ranges from 4-10 kev, 10-15 kev, 15-25 kev 25-50 kev and 50-84 kev. To find flares, you should use the two ranges with the lowest energy, i.e. 4-10 kev and 15-25 kev. They are most sensitive to flare generated x-ray emissions.

For the MWA telescope, you should choose the time and the frequency resolution of the observation. You can use the default values to start with.

Output

The output is a plot of the light curves for the selected time range and energy levels and the spectrogram from the MWA telescope. You can now have a look at the spectrogram to see if you can spot any radio bursts. A peak in the light curves may give you a hint at which time to look for. However, you may not see a burst even if there is a peak from STIX. The current version of this workflow does not consider the position of the probe in relation to Earth. It may detect an X-ray flare that is not directed towards our planet.

Authors and acknowledgment

Main contributors:

From FHNW, Institute for Data Science, Switzerland:

  • Predrag Matavulj
  • Tschai Yimvuthikul
  • Andreas Wassmer

Backend:

  • Renkulab.io

Data and results presented by:

  • STIX team
  • MMODA platform