Studying Sun–Planet Connections Using the Heliophysics Integrated Observatory (HELIO)

Abstract

The Heliophysics Integrated Observatory (HELIO) is a software infrastructure involving a collection of web services, heliospheric data sources (e.g., solar, planetary, etc.), and event catalogues – all of which are accessible through a unified front end. In this paper we use the HELIO infrastructure to perform three case studies based on solar events that propagate through the heliosphere. These include a coronal mass ejection that intersects both Earth and Mars, a solar energetic particle event that crosses the orbit of Earth, and a high-speed solar wind stream, produced by a coronal hole, that is observed in situ at Earth (L1). A ballistic propagation model is run as one of the HELIO services and used to model these events, predicting if they will interact with a spacecraft or planet and determining the associated time of arrival. The HELIO infrastructure streamlines the method used to perform these kinds of case study by centralising the process of searching for and visualising data, indicating interesting features on the solar disk, and finally connecting remotely observed solar features with those detected by in situ solar wind and energetic particle instruments. HELIO represents an important leap forward in European heliophysics infrastructure by bridging the boundaries of traditional scientific domains.