The SWAP Filter: A Simple Azimuthally Varying Radial Filter for Wide-Field EUV Solar Images

Area of Science:

• Solar Physics
• Space Weather
• Astronomy

Background:

• Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) imaging is crucial for studying the solar corona.
• Analyzing low signal-to-noise data in the middle corona presents significant challenges.
• The Sun Watcher with Active Pixels and Image Processing (SWAP) instrument provides wide field-of-view EUV observations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and describe the SWAP Filter, a novel image processing technique.
• To detail the filter's development, implementation, and configurable parameters.
• To demonstrate the filter's effectiveness in enhancing EUV solar corona images.

Main Methods:

• Development of an azimuthally varying, radial normalizing filter.
• Application of the SWAP Filter to EUV images from the SWAP instrument on PROBA2.
• User-configurable parameters for tailored data processing.

Main Results:

• The SWAP Filter effectively enhances features in EUV solar corona images.
• Demonstrated improvements in data quality, particularly for low signal-to-noise regions.
• Examples illustrate the filter's impact on scientific data analysis.

Conclusions:

• The SWAP Filter is a valuable tool for processing EUV solar corona imagery.
• It addresses the growing need for advanced analysis techniques with new observational data.
• The filter is expected to be increasingly important for future solar physics research.