Comparisons of CME morphological characteristics derived from five 3D reconstruction methods

TL;DR

This study compares five 3D reconstruction methods for CMEs, analyzing their accuracy, consistency, and advantages using a specific CME event, highlighting the effectiveness of mask fitting and geometric localisation.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of five CME 3D reconstruction methods applied to the same event, revealing their relative accuracies and the benefits of multi-view observations.

Findings

Mask fitting and geometric localisation produce consistent results.

Three-view observations yield more precise reconstructions.

Mask fitting can resolve front/back ambiguity in polarisation methods.

Abstract

We compare different methods to reconstruct the three-dimensional (3D) CME morphology. The explored methods include geometric localisation, mask fitting, forward modeling, polarisation ratio and local correlation tracking plus triangulation. The five methods are applied to the same CME event, which occurred on August 7 2010. Their corresponding results are presented and compared, especially in their propagation direction and spatial extent in 3D. We find that mask fitting and geometric localisation method produce consistent results. Reconstructions including three-view observations are more precise than reconstructions done with only two views. Compared to the forward modeling method, in which a-priori shape of the CME geometry is assumed, mask fitting has more flexibility. Polarisation ratio method makes use of the Thomson scattering geometry. We find spatially the 3D CME derived from mask fitting lies mostly in the overlap region obtained with the polarisation method from COR2 A and B. In addition, mask fitting can help resolve the front/back ambiguity inherent in the polarisation ratio method. However, local correlation tracking plus triangulation did not show a consistent result with the other four methods. For reconstructions of a diffuse CME, when the separation angle between STEREO A and B is large, finding two corresponding points in a STEREO image pair becomes very difficult. Excluding the local correlation tracking method, the latitude of the CME's centre of gravity derived from the other methods deviates within one degree and longitude differs within 19 degrees.