Solar wind speed maps from the Metis coronagraph observations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Context. The solar wind plays a crucial role in shaping the heliosphere and influencing space weather. Understanding its origin and acceleration requires measurements of coronal dynamics. The Metis coronagraph on board of Solar Orbiter provides high-resolution simultaneous imaging of the middle solar corona in the polarized visible light and ultraviolet H I Ly α , which allows us to derive solar wind speed maps. Aims. We determine solar wind speed maps by applying the Doppler dimming technique to Metis observations in the distance range from about 3.0 to 7.6 R ⊙ . The goal is to present the detailed algorithm, investigate the dependence of the speed on the parameters of the coronal model, and provide maps of the solar wind speed at the minimum of the solar activity. This is useful to improve our understanding of the physical processes that accelerate the wind. Methods. Solar wind speeds are inferred by analyzing H I Ly α intensities in combination with electron density maps derived from visible-light polarized-brightness data. The Doppler dimming effect is used to estimate outflow velocities with different coronal model parameters, such as the electron temperature, the kinetic temperature, and the helium abundance, which are tested to assess their effect on the results. Results. The wind speed maps confirm the bimodal distribution of the solar wind outflow velocities that characterize the near-minimum phases of solar activity. The slow wind (100−200 km s −1 ) confined to the equatorial streamer belt and fast wind (250−400 km s −1 ) originates from the polar coronal holes. The transition between these regions is sharp, with a steep velocity gradient at mid-latitudes. Variations in the coronal model parameters significantly affect the inferred speeds. This highlights the need for precise constraints on the coronal conditions. Conclusions. Our method allows a systematic mapping of the solar wind speed and can be applied to data that are daily acquired by Metis throughout the current solar cycle. This provides new information on regions in which the wind is accelerated and on their evolution. These results provide valuable constraints for heliospheric models and theoretical studies of the formation of the solar wind. Future observations, in particular, during closer Solar Orbiter perihelia, will refine these measurements and improve our understanding of the solar corona and solar wind dynamics.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".