The aim of the Ionosphere Prediction Service (IPS) project is to design and develop a prototype platform to translate the prediction and forecast of the ionosphere effects into a service customized for specific GNSS user communities. The project team is composed by Telespazio (coordinator), Nottingham Scientific Ltd, Telespazio Vega Deutschland, the University of Nottingham, the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” and the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV). The IPS development is conceived of two concurrent activities: prototype service design and development & research activity that will run along the whole project. Service design and development is conceived into four phases: user requirements collection, architecture specification, implementation and validation of the prototype. A sub-activity analyses also the integration feasibility in the Galileo Service center, located in Madrid. The research activity is the scientific backbone of IPS that will provide the models and algorithms for the forecasting products.

The RHESSI hard X-ray spectra are investigated for a total of 23 CME-related flares. It is found that about 17%, 70%, and 13% of the samples can be attributed to type A, B, and C, respectively. These ratios are not significantly different from those obtained using the data of HXRBS/SMM, although the ratio of type C in our CME-related flares is a little higher. More samples are obviously necessary to study the difference of hard X-ray spectra between the CME-related flares and non-CME-related flares.To search for other articles by the author(s) go to: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html

The discovery of “EIT waves” after the launch of SOHO spacecraft sparked wide interest among the coronal mass ejection (CME) community since they may be crucial to the understanding of CMEs. However, the nature of this phenomenon is still being hotly debated between fast-mode wave explanation and non-wave explanation. Accumulating observations have shown various features of the “EIT waves”. For example, they tend to be devoid of magnetic neutral lines and coronal holes; they may stop near the magnetic separatrix between the source region and a nearby active region; they may experience an acceleration from the vicinity of the source active region to the quiet region, and so on. This paper is aimed to review all these features, discuss how these observations may provide constraints for the theoretical models, and point out their implication to the understanding of CMEs.To search for other articles by the author(s) go to: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html