Coronal Mass Ejections from the Same Active Region Cluster: Two Different Perspectives

Abstract

The cluster formed by active regions (ARs) NOAA 11121 and 11123, approximately located on the solar central meridian on 11 November 2010, is of great scientific interest. This complex was the site of violent flux emergence and the source of a series of Earth-directed events on the same day. The onset of the events was nearly simultaneously observed by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) telescope onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the Extreme-Ultraviolet Imagers (EUVI) on the Sun-Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI) suite of telescopes onboard the Solar-Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) twin spacecraft. The progression of these events in the low corona was tracked by the Large Angle Spectroscopic Coronagraphs (LASCO) onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and the SECCHI/COR coronagraphs on STEREO. SDO and SOHO imagers provided data from the Earth’s perspective, whilst the STEREO twin instruments procured images from the orthogonal directions. This spatial configuration of spacecraft allowed optimum simultaneous observations of the AR cluster and the coronal mass ejections that originated in it. Quadrature coronal observations provided by STEREO revealed many more ejective events than were detected from Earth. Furthermore, joint observations by SDO/AIA and STEREO/SECCHI EUVI of the source region indicate that all events classified by GOES as X-ray flares had an ejective coronal counterpart in quadrature observations. These results directly affect current space weather forecasting because alarms might be missed when there is a lack of solar observations in a view direction perpendicular to the Sun-Earth line.