Turning Noise into Data: Characterization of the Van Allen Radiation
Belt Using SDO Spikes Data
Abstract
The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is a solar mission in an inclined
geosynchronous orbit. Since commissioning, images acquired by
Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument on-board the SDO have
frequently displayed “spikes”, pixel regions yielding extreme number
of digital counts. These are theorized to occur from energetic electron
collisions with the instrument detector system. These spikes are
regularly removed from AIA Level 1.0 images to produce clean and
reliable data. A study of historical data has found over 100 trillion
spikes in the past decade. This project correlates spike detection
frequency with radiation environment parameters in order to generate an
augmented data product from SDO. We conduct a correlation study between
SDO/AIA data and radiation belt activity within the SDO’s orbit. By
extracting radiation “spike” data from the SDO/AIA images, we produce
a comprehensive data product which is correlated not only with
geomagnetic parameters such as Kp, Ap and Sym-H but also with the
electron and proton fluxes measured by the GOES-14 satellite. As a
result, we find that AIA spikes are highly correlated with the GOES-14
electrons detected by the MAGED and EPEAD instruments at the equator
(where the two satellites meet) with Spearman’s Correlation values of
ρ=0.73 and ρ=0.53 respectively, while a weaker correlation of ρ=0.47 is
shown with MAGPD protons for the two year period where both missions
returned data uninterruptedly. This correlation proves that the SDO
spike data can be proven useful for characterizing the Van Allen
radiation belt, especially at areas where other satellites cannot.