The ICME Superevent 2003: A view from Ulysses

In October-November 2003 a series of exceptionally large events took place on the Sun. They led to a series of CMEs, which propagated through interplanetary space and reached Ulysses, where they created a very unusually strong ICME event. We will present the observations from Ulysses, which was located at 5 AU close to the west limb of the Sun. The speed resulting from this event, v_α∼ 999.2 km/s, was the highest 3-hour average ever observed at Ulysses during its entire mission since late 1990. During almost a week, events were arriving at Ulysses, which all had the same source region at the Sun. We describe the superevent from Ulysses-SWICS data with consideration of compositional signatures, such as Fe charge state, O⁷⁺/O⁶⁺ ratio and the α/p ratio. Then we map the in situ observations back to the Sun and identify them with events observed from SOHO. We will discuss the detailed association of SOHO CMEs and Ulysses in situ observations.