Enhancement of Space Plasma Images by Complex Wavelets

Abstract

The Sun is a natural laboratory for plasma processes. A myriad of instruments aboard satellites and on ground record(ed) the plasma emission in different ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum to help understand such processes. In particular, in the outer part of the solar atmosphere, the solar corona, we can observe a multitude of electrodynamical phenomena. There, the faint corona emission and the associated dynamic plasma structures (e.g., coronal mass ejections—CMEs) recorded in white-light images can be used as basis for some insight of this physical scenario. In order to characterize the dynamics and morphology of such structures in a better way, it seems crucial that some features of those images should be enhanced. To deal with this need, a new approach using a complex wavelet transform methodology was developed. With the proposed methodology, we can highlight the plasma ejections improving the identification of those structures.