The analysis of type II and type III solar radio bursts: GUI for the e-CALLISTO data

Solar radio bursts are sudden peaks in the low-frequency radio emissions originating from the sun. These emissions, while revealing important insights into underlying physical mechanisms in solar physics, can also help predict space weather events that could have adverse effects on satellite communications and the global energy grid. A thorough understanding of this phenomena demands the collection and analysis of solar emission data over vast geographical and time scales. In this regard, the e-CALLISTO network plays a major role through having already archived more than 20 years worth of solar radio burst data. Leveraging on the advances in data analysis techniques, this data can be used to review the statistical significance of burst properties of type II and type III solar radio bursts and hence more importantly the magnetic field measurements of the active regions. In order to process the e-CALLISTO data, a software containing several data reduction processes is introduced to optimize the data analysis via a graphical user interface (GUI). The program is capable of reading out data from any CALLISTO receiving station, while offering visualization capabilities such as the color-corrected spectrum view, the plot of frequencies of the highest intensity, the individual frequency spectrum, the solar burst isolation portal, the fitting model for the radio burst, and the drift rate curve of the burst. These are achieved through using the raw “fits” files of spectra to perform background RFI reduction, identify and isolate solar radio burst regions, model the peak frequency variation using curve fitting, and thereby determine the frequency drift rates. The method can be directly applied to Type II and III solar bursts while providing space for tailoring and modification. In this work, the slow drift type II radio bursts were fitted by exponential decay and the fast drift type III radio bursts were approximated as linear decay. Hence, the frequency drift rates were computed for type II and type III radio bursts. The application is used to analyze several Type II and Type III solar radio bursts and depending on the bust type shock speed and electron velocity were determined. The GUI interface eliminates the time-consuming subjective manual analysis of e-CALLISTO data thereby making the analysis of solar radio bursts a routine and rapid process.