A Coronal Mass Ejection Source Region Catalog and Their Associated Properties

Abstract

The primary objective of this study is to connect coronal mass ejections (CMEs) to their source regions, primarily to create a CME source region catalog, and secondarily to probe the influence that the source regions have on the different statistical properties of CMEs. We create a source region catalog for 3327 CMEs from 1998 to 2017, thus capturing the different phases of cycles 23 and 24. The identified source regions are segregated into three classes— active regions, prominence eruptions, and active prominences—while the CMEs are segregated into slow and fast groups, based on their average projected speeds. We find the contributions of these three source region types to the occurrences of slow and fast CMEs to be different in the above period. A study of the distribution of the average speeds reveals different power laws for CMEs originating from different sources, and the power laws are different during the different phases of cycles 23 and 24. A study of the statistical latitudinal deflections shows equatorward deflections, while the magnitudes of the deflections again bear imprints of the source regions. An east–west asymmetry is also noted, particularly in the rising phase of cycle 23, with the presence of active longitudes for the CMEs, with a preference toward the western part of the Sun. Our results show that different aspects of CME kinematics bear strong imprints of the source regions they originate from, thus indicating the existence of different ejection and/or propagation mechanisms of these CMEs.