Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My 11 year old is graphing the relationship, if any, between the # of CMEs and sun spots during the same time periods. On the SOHO LASCO CME catalog website does "poor event", "Only C2" and "partial halo" each count as one CME for graphing purposes?

Pmaeda,

Thank you for your question, and welcome to Science Buddies. In the database, I'm assuming you are referencing items in the notes column. Each item counts as a CME. These are notes pertaining to how the data was obtained and/or the quality of the data. Events that are difficult to distinguish from other events or are hard to detect are classed as "poor". The LASCO instrument has 3 telescopes, C1, C2, C3. C1 has been disabled, and no longer provides data. An event that is "C2 only" means it was captured by only one detector and lacks sterio detection, reducing the quality of some calculations.

Bottom line, CME vs sun spot correlations shouldn't be affected by these notes.

For more information, this link provides a fairly detailed description of the CME cataloge. http://cdaw.gsfc.nasa.gov/CME_list/cata ... iption.htm