Stereo direct imaging of a coronal mass ejection-driven shock to 0.5AU

Abstract

Fast coronal mass ejections (CMEs) generate standing or bow shocks as they propagate through the corona and solar wind. Although CME shocks have previously been detected indirectly via their emission at radio frequencies, direct imaging has remained elusive due to their low contrast at optical wavelengths. Here we report the first images of a CME-driven shock as it propagates through interplanetary space from 8 R⊙ to 120 R⊙ (0.5AU), using observations from the STEREO Heliospheric Imager. The CME was measured to have a velocity of ∼1000kms-1 and a Mach number of 4.1 ± 1.2, while the shock front standoff distance (Δ) was found to increase linearly to ∼20 R⊙ at 0.5 AU. The normalized standoff distance (Δ/DO ) showed reasonable agreement with semi-empirical relations, where DO is the CME radius. However, when normalized using the radius of curvature, Δ/RO did not agree well with theory, implying that RO was underestimated by a factor of ≈3-8. This is most likely due to the difficulty in estimating the larger radius of curvature along the CME axis from the observations, which provide only a cross-sectional view of the CME. © 2011. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.