A high charge state Coronal Mass Ejection seen through solar wind charge exchange emission as detected by XMM-Newton

Abstract

We present the analysis of an observation by XMM-Newton that exhibits strongly variable, low-energy diffuse X-ray line emission. We reason that this emission is due to localised solar wind charge exchange (SWCX), originating from a passing cloud of plasma associated with a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) interacting with neutrals in the Earth's exosphere. This case of SWCX exhibits a much richer emission line spectrum in comparison with previous examples of geocoronal SWCX or in interplanetary space. We show that emission from OVIII is very prominent in the SWCX spectrum. The observed flux from oxygen ions of 18.9 keV cm-2 s-1 sr-1 is consistent with SWCX resulting from a passing CME. Highly ionised silicon is also observed in the spectrum, and the presence of highly charged iron is an additional spectral indicator that we are observing emission from a CME. We argue that this is the same event detected by the solar wind monitors ACE and Wind which measured an intense increase in the solar wind flux due to a CME that had been released from the Sun two days previous to the XMM-Newton observation.

Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 30th October 2009. 13 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables

References in corpus (8)

• A Catalog of Galaxy Clusters Observed by XMM-Newton
• The XMM-Newton EPIC Background and the production of Background Blank Sky Event Files
• OVII and OVIII line emission in the diffuse soft X-ray background: heliospheric and galactic contributions
• Identifying XMM-Newton observations affected by solar wind charge exchange - Part I
• Xmm-Newton Observations of the Diffuse X-ray Background
• EBIT Charge-Exchange Measurements and Astrophysical Applications
• The Solar Wind Charge-eXchange contribution to the Local Soft X-ray Background. Model to data comparison in the 0.1-1.0 keV band
• Statistical evaluation of the flux cross-calibration of the XMM-Newton EPIC cameras

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• The SMILE mission
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• Bayesian Modeling of NICER Cometary X-ray Spectra: A Legacy Survey of Solar-Wind Charge Exchange