Data for Events

                 Every now and then a special event will occur in the solar wind that receives a lot of attention, such as the amazing solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) associated with the July 14 2000 “Bastille Day CME and the late October 2003 Halloween CMEs.  On this page I have placed Wind and IMP-8 solar wind observations during special events. 

                 These events often produce extra challenges for those who operate the instruments on the spacecraft that comprise our great heliospheric observatory (Wind, IMP-8, ACE, Ulysses, SOHO, to name a few).  For example, the Bastille Day and Halloween events produced extremely intense radiation environments near Earth that affected many instruments.  The first of the Halloween events had a peak speed of 1,940 km/s, or 4.4 million miles an hour, which was far larger than typical solar wind speeds.  The Wind Faraday Cups themselves were not directly affected by these events, but we were able to greatly improve the final derived parameters by running the analysis manually or extending the analysis codes to handle high speeds.

Justin C. Kasper

Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research

The Halloween CMEs