CACTUS autonomously detects coronal mass ejections (CMEs) in image sequences from LASCO. The output of our software is a list of events, similar to the classic catalogs, with principle angle, angular width and velocity estimation for each CME. In contrast to catalogs assembled by human operators, these CME detections by software can be faster, which is especially important in the context of space weather, and possibly also more objective, as the detection criterion is written explicitly in a program.

The CME list is automatically generated by CACTus. There is no human intervention or supervision at this stage. Therefor we ask to use caution when using the data for statistical purposes.

When any of this data is used, please cite one of the following publications:

(Near) real time output:

CACTus COR2 CME list:

CACTus LASCO CME catalog:


CACTus LASCO, SECCHI-A and SECCHI-b CME rate versus the Sunspot number.


The data use to construct this plot can be found here: in ascii or in XML

CACTus HI CME catalog:

More info:

External links: