Speaker
Description
Identifying reliable coronal mass ejection (CME) interplanetary CME (ICME) pairs remains one of the major challenges in heliophysics. Despite the availability of multiple CME and ICME lists, association between solar eruptions and their interplanetary counterparts often differ significantly across studies. This inconsistency highlights the inherent uncertainty and complexity in tracing solar wind transients back to their solar origins. Contributing factors include limited observational coverage, projection effects, and various interactions between CMEs or with stream interaction regions, all of which complicate the establishment of clear connections.
In this work, we focus on ICMEs observed by the Solar Orbiter mission. We searched the in situ plasma and magnetic field data collected between April 2020 and April 2024 and identified ICMEs based on key features, including the onset of the sheath or pile-up region, as well as the start and end times of the magnetic obstacle. To investigate their solar sources, we applied a drag-based model to back-propagate the events to the Sun. Using timing, velocity, and position angle constraints, we searched the SOHO/LASCO CME catalog to identify the most likely CME counterparts observed in coronagraph data. When additional imaging is available — from the SDO/AIA, STEREO-A/EUVI, or Solar Orbiter/EUI we extend the search further into the low corona to identify the exact solar source region, in most of cases successfully identifying specific eruption sites.
The Solar Orbiter ICME list, the corresponding candidate CMEs, and a detailed overview of the methodology used to establish these associations—highlighting the inherent challenges and uncertainties in the CME–ICME identification process—will be presented.
