English

Automatic Detection of Occulted Hard X-ray Flares Using Deep-Learning Methods

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2021-02-24 v1 Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Artificial Intelligence Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Machine Learning

Abstract

We present a concept for a machine-learning classification of hard X-ray (HXR) emissions from solar flares observed by the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI), identifying flares that are either occulted by the solar limb or located on the solar disk. Although HXR observations of occulted flares are important for particle-acceleration studies, HXR data analyses for past observations were time consuming and required specialized expertise. Machine-learning techniques are promising for this situation, and we constructed a sample model to demonstrate the concept using a deep-learning technique. Input data to the model are HXR spectrograms that are easily produced from RHESSI data. The model can detect occulted flares without the need for image reconstruction nor for visual inspection by experts. A technique of convolutional neural networks was used in this model by regarding the input data as images. Our model achieved a classification accuracy better than 90 %, and the ability for the application of the method to either event screening or for an event alert for occulted flares was successfully demonstrated.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2101.11550,
  title  = {Automatic Detection of Occulted Hard X-ray Flares Using Deep-Learning Methods},
  author = {Shin-nosuke Ishikawa and Hideaki Matsumura and Yasunobu Uchiyama and Lindsay Glesener},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.11550},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

11 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Solar Physics

R2 v1 2026-06-23T22:35:38.583Z