A machine learning approach for computing solar flare locations in X-rays on-board Solar Orbiter/STIX

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Massa, Paolo, Felix, Simon, Etesi, László István, Dickson, Ewan C. M., Xiao, Hualin, Ramunno, Francesco P., Selcuk-Simsek, Merve, Panos, Brandon, Csillaghy, André, Krucker, Säm
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Massa, Paolo
Felix, Simon
Etesi, László István
Dickson, Ewan C. M.
Xiao, Hualin
Ramunno, Francesco P.
Selcuk-Simsek, Merve
Panos, Brandon
Csillaghy, André
Krucker, Säm
author_facet Massa, Paolo
Felix, Simon
Etesi, László István
Dickson, Ewan C. M.
Xiao, Hualin
Ramunno, Francesco P.
Selcuk-Simsek, Merve
Panos, Brandon
Csillaghy, André
Krucker, Säm
contents The Spectrometer/Telescope for Imaging X-rays (STIX) on-board the ESA Solar Orbiter mission retrieves the coordinates of solar flare locations by means of a specific sub-collimator, named the Coarse Flare Locator (CFL). When a solar flare occurs on the Sun, the emitted X-ray radiation casts the shadow of a peculiar "H-shaped" tungsten grid over the CFL X-ray detector. From measurements of the areas of the detector that are illuminated by the X-ray radiation, it is possible to retrieve the $(x,y)$ coordinates of the flare location on the solar disk. In this paper, we train a neural network on a dataset of real CFL observations to estimate the coordinates of solar flare locations. Further, we apply a post-training quantization technique specifically tailored to the adopted model architecture. This technique allows all computations to be in integer arithmetic at inference time, making the model compatible with the STIX computational requirements. We show that our model outperforms the currently adopted algorithm for estimating the flare locations from CFL data regarding prediction accuracy while requiring fewer parameters. We finally discuss possible future applications of the proposed model on-board STIX.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_16642
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A machine learning approach for computing solar flare locations in X-rays on-board Solar Orbiter/STIX
Massa, Paolo
Felix, Simon
Etesi, László István
Dickson, Ewan C. M.
Xiao, Hualin
Ramunno, Francesco P.
Selcuk-Simsek, Merve
Panos, Brandon
Csillaghy, André
Krucker, Säm
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
The Spectrometer/Telescope for Imaging X-rays (STIX) on-board the ESA Solar Orbiter mission retrieves the coordinates of solar flare locations by means of a specific sub-collimator, named the Coarse Flare Locator (CFL). When a solar flare occurs on the Sun, the emitted X-ray radiation casts the shadow of a peculiar "H-shaped" tungsten grid over the CFL X-ray detector. From measurements of the areas of the detector that are illuminated by the X-ray radiation, it is possible to retrieve the $(x,y)$ coordinates of the flare location on the solar disk. In this paper, we train a neural network on a dataset of real CFL observations to estimate the coordinates of solar flare locations. Further, we apply a post-training quantization technique specifically tailored to the adopted model architecture. This technique allows all computations to be in integer arithmetic at inference time, making the model compatible with the STIX computational requirements. We show that our model outperforms the currently adopted algorithm for estimating the flare locations from CFL data regarding prediction accuracy while requiring fewer parameters. We finally discuss possible future applications of the proposed model on-board STIX.
title A machine learning approach for computing solar flare locations in X-rays on-board Solar Orbiter/STIX
topic Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.16642