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

Sol Phys. 2023;298(7):92. doi: 10.1007/s11207-023-02183-w. Epub 2023 Jul 18.

Abstract

We present the SWAP Filter: an azimuthally varying, radial normalizing filter specifically developed for EUV images of the solar corona, named for the Sun Watcher with Active Pixels and Image Processing (SWAP) instrument on the Project for On-Board Autonomy 2 (PROBA2) spacecraft. We discuss the origins of our technique, its implementation and key user-configurable parameters, and highlight its effects on data via a series of examples. We discuss the filter's strengths in a data environment in which wide field-of-view observations that specifically target the low signal-to-noise middle corona are newly available and expected to grow in the coming years.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11207-023-02183-w.

Keywords: Corona; Image processing; Instrumental effects; Instrumentation and data management.