We present the stray-light point-spread functions (PSFs) and their inverses we characterized for the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) EUV telescopes on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft. The inverse kernels are approximate inverses under convolution. Convolving the original Level 1 images with them produces images with improved stray-light characteristics. We demonstrate the usefulness of these PSFs by applying them to two specific cases: photometry and differential emission measure (DEM) analysis. The PSFs consist of a narrow Gaussian core, a diffraction component, and a diffuse component represented by the sum of a Gaussian-truncated Lorentzian and a shoulder Gaussian. We determined the diffraction term using the measured geometry of the diffraction pattern identified in flare images and the theoretically computed intensities of the principal maxima of the first few diffraction orders. To determine the diffuse component, we fitted its parameterized model using iterative forward-modeling of the lunar interior in the SDO/AIA images from the 2011 March 4 lunar transit. We find that deconvolution significantly improves the contrast in dark features such as miniature coronal holes, though the effect was marginal in bright features. On a percentage-scattering basis, the PSFs for SDO/AIA are better by a factor of two than that of the EUV telescope on board the Transition Region And Coronal Explorer mission. A preliminary analysis suggests that deconvolution alone does not affect DEM analysis of small coronal loop segments with suitable background subtraction. We include the derived PSFs and their inverses as supplementary digital materials.

The National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) will revolutionize our ability to measure, understand, and model the basic physical processes that control the structure and dynamics of the Sun and its atmosphere. The first-light DKIST images, released publicly on 29 January 2020, only hint at the extraordinary capabilities that will accompany full commissioning of the five facility instruments. With this Critical Science Plan (CSP) we attempt to anticipate some of what those capabilities will enable, providing a snapshot of some of the scientific pursuits that the DKIST hopes to engage as start-of-operations nears. The work builds on the combined contributions of the DKIST Science Working Group (SWG) and CSP Community members, who generously shared their experiences, plans, knowledge, and dreams. Discussion is primarily focused on those issues to which DKIST will uniquely contribute.

A solar energetic particle event was detected by the Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun (IS⊙IS) instrument suite on Parker Solar Probe (PSP) on 2019 April 4 when the spacecraft was inside of 0.17 au and less than 1 day before its second perihelion, providing an opportunity to study solar particle acceleration and transport unprecedentedly close to the source. The event was very small, with peak 1 MeV proton intensities of ∼0.3 particles (cm 2 sr s MeV) −1 , and was undetectable above background levels at

A series of solar energetic particle (SEP) events was observed by the Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun (ISeIS) on the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) during the period from 2019 April 18 through 24. The PSP spacecraft was located near 0.48 au from the Sun on Parker spiral field lines that projected out to 1 au within ∼25°of the near-Earth spacecraft. These SEP events, though small compared to historically large SEP events, were among the largest observed thus far in the PSP mission and provide critical information about the space environment inside 1 au during SEP events. During this period, the Sun released multiple coronal mass ejections (CMEs). One of these CMEs observed was initiated on 2019 April 20 at 01:25 UTC, and the interplanetary CME (ICME) propagated out and passed over the PSP spacecraft. Observations by the Electromagnetic Fields Investigation show that the magnetic field structure was mostly radial throughout the passage of the compression region and the plasma that followed, indicating that PSP did not directly observe a flux rope internal to the ICME, consistent with the location of PSP on the ICME flank. Analysis using relativistic electrons observed near Earth by the Electron, Proton and Alpha Monitor on the Advanced Composition Explorer demonstrates the presence of electron seed populations (40-300 keV) during the events observed. The energy spectrum of the ISeIS-observed proton seed population below 1 MeV is close to the limit of possible stationary-state plasma distributions out of equilibrium. ISeISobservations reveal the enhancement of seed populations during the passage of the ICME, which likely indicates a key part of the preacceleration process that occurs close to the Sun.

We have carried out a comparative study of the predicted solar wind based on the flux tube expansion factor computed using the current sheet source surface (CSSS) model and the potential field source surface (PFSS) model, with the aim of determining whether the CSSS model represents the solar wind sources better than the PFSS model. For this, we obtained the root mean square errors (RMSEs) and the correlation coefficients between the observed solar wind speed and that predicted by the models, the ratio of RMSEs between the two models, and a skill score. On average, the CSSS predictions are more accurate than the PFSS predictions by a factor of 1.6, taking RMSE as the metric of accuracy. The RMSEs increased as the solar cycle progressed toward maximum, indicating the difficulty in modeling the corona as the global field becomes more complex. We also compared the WSA/ENLIL predictions for a few Carrington rotations; the Wang-Sheeley-Arge (WSA) model makes use of the PFSS extrapolations to model the wind source. We found that the average value of RMSE ratio between the CSSS and the WSA/ENLIL predictions was about 1.9, implying that the CSSS predictions are nearly twice better than the WSA/ENLIL predictions, despite the simplicity of the CSSS model compared to ENLIL. We conclude, based on the present analysis, that the CSSS model is a valid proxy for solar wind measurements and that it improves upon existing commonly used methods of wind prediction or proxy analysis.