Cradle to grave tracking of the January 6-11, 1997 Sun-Earth connection event

Abstract

During the interval January 6-11, 1997, the satellites and ground facilities of the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) "Observatory" tracked a solar eruption from the Sun to the Earth. The resulting Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) took four days to travel through interplanetary space before arriving at Earth, where it caused electromagnetic disturbances and spectacular aurorae. The initial expulsion lifted off the Sun on January 6, the resulting magnetic cloud arrived on January 10, and its effects lasted over 24 hours. The initial solar observations from SOHO were reported on January 7, during an ISTP Science Workshop on Sun-Earth Connection events. This alerted the community to the impending arrival of the CME thereby allowing the event to be monitored in 'realtime' using the wide variety of ISTP instruments. This event provided the first ever end to end tracking of a space storm. Further, it provided a strong pressure pulse of extremely high density resulting in the compression of the magnetopause to within geosynchronous orbit during northward IMF conditions. Here we present an overview of the event and available observations. Copyright 1998 by the American Geophysical Union.