SOHO/Energetic and Relativistic Nucleon and Electron Experiment Measurements of Energetic H, He, O, and Fe Fluxes during the 1997 November 6 Solar Event

Abstract

A brilliant solar X-ray and Hα flare and a coronal mass ejection (CME) on 1997 November 6 were associated with high particle fluxes in interplanetary space at energies above MeV. The CME had an exceptionally high leading edge velocity (1560 km s-1) as observed by the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) on board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). The Energetic and Relativistic Nucleon and Electron experiment (ERNE), also on SOHO, measured high H, He, O, and Fe fluxes in several energy channels from 3 to 200 MeV nucleon-1. The oxygen energy spectrum in energy range 3-200 MeV nucleon-1 was of a broken-power-law form with a break around 50 MeV nucleon-1. In addition, ERNE observed abrupt changes in the intensity, elemental composition, and anisotropy of high-energy particles, which may indicate two energetic particle sources during several hours after the solar flare eruption. The observational results lead us to conclude that, most of the time, the O and Fe nuclei were injected by the interplanetary shock associated with the coronal mass ejection emitted around 12 UT on November 6. However, during two time periods the injection source might have been different or complementary. The first period was in the very beginning of the event, 13:20-13:40 UT, when the particle streaming showed very strong anisotropy with the maximum intensity from the direction of the Sun. The second was between 17 UT November 6 and 5 UT November 7, when particle fluxes were dominated by a particle population with a different elemental composition and a different spectral shape of O as compared with the particle population prevailing in the beginning and during the long decay phase of the event. We propose that the source of these particles was associated with a coronal shock wave traveling in the low solar atmosphere.