The DH type II burst catalog: A brief description

URL: http://cdaw.gsfc.nasa.gov/CME_list/radio/waves_type2.html.

This is a catalog of decameter-hectometric (DH) type II bursts observed by the Radio and Plasma Wave (WAVES) experiment on board the Wind and STEREO spacecraft and the associated coronal mass ejections (CMEs) observed by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO, and Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) missions. Part of this catalog is derived from the Wind/WAVES list available at https://spdf.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/data/stereo/documents/websites/solar-radio/wind/data_products.html by adding a few missing events. From 2006, the catalog also contains data from STEREO WAVES. The CMEs in this catalog are called radio-loud CMEs because of their ability to produce type II radio bursts. The CME sources are also listed, as derived from the Solar Geophysical Data listing or from inner coronal images such as Yohkoh/SXT, SOHO/EIT, STEREO/EUVI, and SDO/AIA. Some solar sources have also been obtained from Solarsoft Latest Events Archive after October 1, 2002: http://www.lmsal.com/solarsoft/latest_events_archive.html. Information on the associated X-ray flares and solar energetic particle (SEP) events are from NOAA/GOES.

Explanation of catalog entries:

Column 1: Starting date of the type II burst (yyyy/mm/dd format)

Column 2: Starting time (UT) of the type II burst (hh:mm format)

Column 3: Ending date of the type II burst (mm/dd format; year in Column 1 applies)

Column 4: Ending time of the Type II burst (hh:mm format)

Column 5: Starting frequency of type II burst (kHz) [1]

Column 6: Ending frequency of type II burst (kHz) [1]

Column 7: Solar source location (Loc) of the associated eruption in heliographic coordinates [2]

Column 8: NOAA active region number (NOAA) [3]

Column 9: Soft X-ray flare importance (Imp) [4]

Column 10: Date of the associated CME (mm/dd format, Year in Column 1 applies) [5]

Column 11: Time of the associated CME (hh:mm format)

Column 12: Central position angle (CPA, degrees) for non-halo CMEs [6]

Column 13: CME width in the sky plane (degrees) [7]

Column 14: CME speed in the sky plane (km/s)

Column 15: Link to the daily proton, height-time, X-ray (PHTX) plots [8]

Notes

[1] ???? indicate that the starting and ending frequencies are not determined.

[2] Heliographic coordinates. S25E16 means the latitude is 25 deg south and 16 deg east (source located in the southeast quadrant of the Sun. N denotes northern latitudes and W denotes western longitudes. Entries like SW90 indicate that the source information is not complete, but we can say that the eruption occurs on the west limb but at southern latitudes; if such entries have a subscript b (e.g., NE90b) it means that the source is behind the particular limb. This information is usually gathered from SOHO/EIT difference images, which show dimming above the limb in question. Completely backside events with no information on the source location are marked as “back”.

[3] If the active region number is not available or if the source region is not an active region, the entry is “----”. Filament regions are denoted by “FILA” or “DSF” for disappearing solar filament.

[4] Soft X-ray flare size (peak flux in the 1-8 A channel) from GOES. “----” means the soft X-ray flux is not available.

[5] Lack of SOHO observations are noted as “LASCO DATA GAP”. Other reasons are also noted if there is no CME parameters measured.

[6] The central position angle (CPA) is meaningful only for non-halo CMEs. For halo CMEs, the entry is “Halo”. For halo CMEs, the height-time measurements are made at a position angle where the halo appears to move the fastest. This is known as the measurement position angle (MPA) and can be found in the main catalog (http://cdaw.gsfc.nasa.gov/CME_List).

[7] Width = 360 means the CME is a fill halo (see [6]). For some entries, there is a prefix “>”, which means the reported width is a lower limit.

[8] ‘PHTX’ (proton, height-time, X-ray) link to three-day overview plots of solar energetic particle events (protons in the >10, >50 and >100 MeV GOES channels).

Links:

The CMEs and the type II bursts can be viewed together using the c2rdif_waves.html movies linked to the starting frequency (Column 5). The c3rdif_waves.html movies are linked to the ending frequencies (Column 6). The CMEs and the GOES flare light curves for a given type II burst can be viewed from the Javascript movies linked to the CME date (Column 10). The height-time plots (linear and quadratic) of the CMEs are linked to the CME speed (Column 14).

PHTX plots are linked to Column 15.

If you have questions, contact: Nat Gopalswamy (gopals@ssedmail.gsfc.nasa.gov)

This work is supported by NASA’s Virtual Observatories Program