CoSEE-Cat is not an animal lounging on your couch but a catalogue of electron streams coming from the Sun.
The streams have been described by parameters measured by eight (8) instruments onboard the spacecraft Solar Orbiter. Each instrument has its own capability: either to see from a distance what happened near the Sun, or to measure the space environment close to the spacecraft and detect the energetic electron streams arriving at Solar Orbiter. The space environment is shaped by the magnetized solar wind which in turn marks the path of these violent electrons. These combined in situ measurements and remote observations required some teamwork.
That was well worth the effort: it allowed our scientists to run an in-depth and broad investigation by applying reversed research and tracing back from the spacecraft, bombarded by these streams of superfast electrons, to the place on the Sun where the electrons were boosted to these high energy levels.
Daria Shukhobodskaia and Luciano Rodriguez, both researchers at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, collected the results, ran the statistics and helped write the scientific paper CoSEE-Cat: a Comprehensive Solar Energetic Electron event Catalogue obtained from combined in-situ and remote-sensing observations from Solar Orbiter. (https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202554830)
Daria and Luciano could link the fast electrons near the spacecraft to eruptions on the Sun using detailed solar images made by the EUI instrument onboard Solar Orbiter.
Daria: “Once we knew the source location on the Sun, we knew what was the trigger: a flare which is in essence a strong light flash, or a coronal mass ejection during which solar plasma escapes in a violent way.”
Luciano continues: “One by one, we identified the trigger of each electron stream near the spacecraft, as a solar flare or a plasma eruption. We could conclude that most events are associated with X-ray and EUV flares. The stronger the flare, which we measure by its peak of the X-ray, the more intense the electron beam arriving at the spacecraft. On the other hand, Coronal Mass Ejections are responsible for longer lasting electron streams.”
Those streams of electrons are a key in space weather as they can be harmful for astronauts, satellites and the onboard electronics.
