A New Comprehensive Data Set of Solar Filaments of 100 yr Interval. I

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive, multi-decade dataset of solar filaments from five observatories, enabling advanced analysis of solar magnetic activity across multiple solar cycles.

Contribution

The authors constructed a centennial solar filament dataset with multi-source data fusion, feature parameters, and analysis tools, filling a gap in long-term solar activity research.

Findings

Dataset covers over 60 years of high-cadence data.

Includes seven data products and eight feature parameters.

Enhances research capabilities in solar filament analysis.

Abstract

Filaments are very common physical phenomena on the Sun and are often taken as important proxies of solar magnetic activities. The study of filaments has become a hot topic in the space weather research. For a more comprehensive understanding of filaments, especially for an understanding of solar activities of multiple solar cycles, it is necessary to perform a combined multifeature analysis by constructing a data set of multiple solar cycle data. To achieve this goal, we constructed a centennial data set that covers the H$\alpha$ data from five observatories around the world. During the data set construction, we encountered varieties of problems, such as data fusion, accurate determination of the solar edge, classifying data by quality, dynamic threshold, and so on, which arose mainly due to multiple sources and a large time span of data. But fortunately, these problems were well solved. The data set includes seven types of data products and eight types of feature parameters with which we can implement the functions of data searching and statistical analyses. It has the characteristics of better continuity and highly complementary to space observation data, especially in the wavelengths not covered by space observations, and covers many solar cycles (including more than 60 yr of high-cadence data). We expect that this new comprehensive data set as well as the tools will help researchers to significantly speed up their search for features or events of interest, for either statistical or case study purposes, and possibly help them get a better and more comprehensive understanding of solar filament mechanisms.