A powerful flare caught by a SOHO instrument
Copyright: SOHO/CDS, SOHO/EIT (ESA & NASA); TRACE (NASA)
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A powerful (X3) flare was caught by SOHO's Coronal Diagnostic Spectrometer (CDS) instrument on Monday, 15 July 2002, just after 20:00 UT. With its limited field of view, CDS rarely catches flares 'right on'. In fact, they normally try to avoid them to spare the detectors from the additional wear. For these alerts, though, a special observing program with short exposures can be used.
The flare was also observed by another instrument on SOHO, the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT).
The flare was associated with an Earth-directed full halo Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), observed by both the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) and Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer (UVCS) on board SOHO. The shock from the CME passed by SOHO at about 15:29 UT on 17 July 2002, as observed by the CELIAS/MTOF Proton Monitor.
Last Update: 1 September 2019
