Imagery Tracking of Sun Activity Using 2D Circular Kernel Time Series Transformation, Entropy Measures and Machine Learning Approaches

The sun is highly complex in nature and its observatory imagery features is one of the most important sources of information about the sun activity, space and Earth's weather conditions. The NASA, solar Dynamics Observatory captures approximately 70,000 images of the sun activity in a day and the continuous visual inspection of this solar observatory images is challenging. In this study, we developed a technique of tracking the sun's activity using 2D circular kernel time series transformation, statistical and entropy measures, with machine learning approaches. The technique involves transforming the solar observatory image section into 1-Dimensional time series (1-DTS) while the statistical and entropy measures (Approach 1) and direct classification (Approach 2) is used to capture the extraction features from the 1-DTS for machine learning classification into 'solar storm' and 'no storm'. We found that the potential accuracy of the model in tracking the activity of the sun is approximately 0.981 for Approach 1 and 0.999 for Approach 2. The stability of the developed approach to rotational transformation of the solar observatory image is evident. When training on the original dataset for Approach 1, the match index (T90) of the distribution of solar storm areas reaches T90 ~ 0.993, and T90 ~ 0.951 for Approach 2. In addition, when using the extended training base, the match indices increased to T90 ~ 0.994 and T90 ~ 1, respectively. This model consistently classifies areas with swirling magnetic lines associated with solar storms and is robust to image rotation, glare, and optical artifacts.