ESA | STARTS

The purpose of this research effort is to carefully select and implement a catalogue of Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) events covering the Solar Orbiter (SolO) mission. In doing so, we first scaned the in-situ proton and electron data of the Energetic Particle Detector (EPD) and the High Energy Telescope (HET) onboard SolO and identify all enhancements E>1 MeV for electrons and E>10 MeV for protons. Then, these identifications of possible SEP events were cross-compared to published events, while visual verification and labeling of each event also take place. Next, metadata were inserted in the catalogue, consisting of physical parameters and observables concerning the possible source solar eruptions, namely solar flares and coronal mass ejections, as well as the propagation conditions of the interplanetary space and possible (if any) multi-spacecraft signatures for each event. Moreover, sliced time series data of each SEP event, along with intensity profiles of proton and electron fluxes in several energy bands, will be made publicly available. Finally, open source Python software tools will be implemented in order to facilitate the consistent extension of the STARTS catalogue when new observations arrive and to allow for the direct utilization of both the catalogue and its building blocks by the scientific community. Therefore, the STARTS catalogue enables researchers to understand the SEPs, their source eruption characteristics and their injection, acceleration and propagation in the inner heliosphere.