Parker Solar Probe's Measurements of the 29 November 2020 Solar Energetic Particle Event

Abstract

On November 29, 2020 active region 12790 was located just beyond the east limb of the Sun as viewed by Earth. It erupted at 12:34UT with an M4.4 flare (as measured by GOES) and launched a coronal mass ejection (CME) traveling ~1700 km/s. Not surprisingly, this fast CME drove a shock that accelerated particles up to tens of MeV/nuc. More unusual was that these solar energetic particles (SEPs) quickly filled the inner heliosphere and the event was observed by spacecraft distributed around the Sun, including Parker Solar Probe (PSP), STEREO-A, Solar Orbiter, and those near Earth such as ACE and SOHO. This was the first mid-sized SEP event detected by the Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun (IS☉IS) suite on PSP and its first opportunity to make measurements of heavy ion spectra up to tens of MeV/nuc. Here we present an overview of event characteristics as determined by IS☉IS, including H, He, O, and Fe spectra, composition as a function of energy, and temporal variations of the energetic particle intensities throughout the event. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons.