XMM-Newton Observation of Solar Wind Charge Exchange Emission

By S. Snowden, M. R. Collier, K. Kuntz. 2004

218 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present an XMM-Newton spectrum of diffuse X-ray emission from within the solar system. The spectrum is dominated by probable C VI lines at 0.37 and 0.46 keV, an O VII line at 0.56 keV, O VIII lines at 0.65 and ~0.8 keV, Ne IX lines at ~0.92 keV, and Mg XI lines at ~1.35 keV. This spectrum is consistent with that expected from charge exchange emission between the highly ionized solar wind and either interstellar neutrals in the heliosphere or material from Earth's exosphere. The emission is clearly seen as a low-energy (E < 1.5 keV) spectral enhancement in one of a series of four observations of the Hubble Deep Field-North. The X-ray enhancement is concurrent with an enhancement in the solar wind measured by Advanced Composition Explorer, Wind, and Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft. The solar wind enhancement reaches a flux level an order of magnitude more intense than typical fluxes at 1 AU and has a significantly enhanced O+7/O+6 ratio. Besides being of interest in its own right for studies of the solar system, this emission can have significant consequences for observations of cosmological objects. It can provide emission lines at zero redshift, which are of particular interest in studies of diffuse thermal emission (e.g., O VII and O VIII), and which can therefore act as contamination in the spectra of objects that cover the entire detector field of view. We propose the use of solar wind monitoring data as a diagnostic to screen for such possibilities.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/14db0b66baaed7e57ae22106370ac6c2e6e15f6a

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Citations in the corpus

X-rays from solar system objects (2007, background): “Another observation of note is that described by Snowden et al. (2004).”
CHANDRA STUDIES OF THE X-RAY GAS PROPERTIES OF GALAXY GROUPS (2008, background): “The soft X-ray background is composed of several components, Galactic, local bubble, geocoronal and heliospheric emission (e.g., Wargelin et al. 2004; Snowden et al. 2004; Koutroumpa et al. 2007).”
CONSTRAINING THE MILKY WAY'S HOT GAS HALO WITH O vii AND O viii EMISSION LINES (2014, background): “…where neutral hydrogen and helium atoms undergo charge exchange reactions with solar wind ions in and around our solar system (Cravens et al. 2001; Snowden et al. 2004; Wargelin et al. 2004; Carter & Sembay 2008; Koutroumpa et al. 2007; Kuntz & Snowden 2008; Carter et al. 2011; Ezoe et al. 2010;…”
The EPIC-MOS particle-induced background spectra (2008, background): “One of our first tests of the particle background removal was the Hubble Deep Field North observations where we discovered that one of the four spectra was very different from the others (Snowden et al. 2004).”