Observations of Coronal Mass Ejections with the Coronal Multichannel Polarimeter

TL;DR

This paper presents high-cadence, multi-parameter observations of coronal mass ejections using the Coronal Multichannel Polarimeter, revealing new insights into CME dynamics and potential space weather forecasting.

Contribution

It introduces the first high-cadence, multi-parameter imaging of CMEs in the low corona, providing new observational constraints for CME models.

Findings

CMEs are associated with increased Doppler shift and line width.

CoMP observations can help constrain CME initiation and propagation models.

Potential for low-cost space weather monitoring.

Abstract

The Coronal Multichannel Polarimeter (CoMP) measures not only the polarization of coronal emission, but also the full radiance profiles of coronal emission lines. For the first time, CoMP observations provide high-cadence image sequences of the coronal line intensity, Doppler shift and line width simultaneously in a large field of view. By studying the Doppler shift and line width we may explore more of the physical processes of CME initiation and propagation. Here we identify a list of CMEs observed by CoMP and present the first results of these observations. Our preliminary analysis shows that CMEs are usually associated with greatly increased Doppler shift and enhanced line width. These new observations provide not only valuable information to constrain CME models and probe various processes during the initial propagation of CMEs in the low corona, but also offer a possible cost-effective and low-risk means of space weather monitoring.