Detection of Solar Wind Disturbances: Mexican Array Radio Telescope IPS Observations at 140 MHz

Abstract

The interplanetary scintillation (IPS) technique is a remote-sensing method for monitoring solar-wind perturbations. The Mexican Array Radio Telescope (MEXART) is a single-station instrument operating at 140 MHz, fully dedicated to performing solar-wind studies employing the IPS technique. We report MEXART solar-wind measurements (scintillation indices and solar-wind velocities) using data obtained during the 2013 and 2014 campaigns. These solar-wind measurements were calculated employing a new methodology based on the wavelet transform (WT) function. We report the variation of the scintillation indices versus the heliocentric distance for two IPS sources (3C48 and 3C147). We found different average conditions of the solar-wind density fluctuations in 2013 and 2014. We used the fittings of the radial dependence of the scintillation index to calculate g-indices. Based on the g-index value, we identified 17 events that could be associated with strong compression regions in the solar wind. We present the first ICME identifications in our data. We associated 14 IPS events with preceding CME counterparts by employing white-light observations from the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. We found that most of the IPS events, detected during the solar maximum of Cycle 24 were associated with complex CME events. For the IPS events associated with single CME counterparts, we found a deceleration tendency of the CMEs as they propagate in the interplanetary medium. These results show that the instrument detects solar-wind disturbances, and the WT methodology provides solar-wind information with good accuracy. The MEXART observations will complement solar-wind IPS studies using other frequencies, and the tracking of solar-wind disturbances by other stations located at different longitudes.