Speaker
Description
Our Sun is a highly dynamic star, exhibiting a broad range of activity from subtle dynamic events to powerful flares and large-scale coronal mass ejections (CMEs). CMEs are vast expulsions of magnetised plasma from the solar corona, while flares are intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation originating in the solar atmosphere. A flare and CME often occur concomitantly; the flare would then be considered “eruptive” and “confined”, respectively. Understanding the intricacies of large-scale solar eruptions and their links to any preceding activity is a central topic in modern heliophysics. Therefore, here, our goal is to determine whether small-scale transient activity within active regions (ARs) contains information about imminent major events. We focus on weak (microflares) to medium-scale (up to M-class) flaring activities. We have developed the BRightenings AnD Polarity Inversion Tracking (BRADPIT) method to monitor the temporal distribution of transient brightenings using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) data from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). BRADPIT compares the spatial distribution of the detected transient brightenings to the polarity inversion line (PIL) of the AR, derived from SDO Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) line-of-sight magnetograms. Using a comparative analysis, we tested this methodology on an X-class flaring AR and a non-flaring one and obtained significant differences in the number of events, as well as the intensity and magnetic unsigned flux co-spatial with the detected brightenings in both cases. Through the comparative analysis of a flare productive and a flare quiescent AR, we seek insights into the pre-flare activity of ARs that we will then use on a statistically significant AR sample to assess their robustness and further validate our findings. This latter step will determine a potential predictive capability of the BRADPIT method, as well as how much it contributes to our understanding of solar dynamics.
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