Automatic detection of white-light flare kernels in SDO/HMI intensitygrams

Solar flares with a broadband emission in the white-light range of the electromagnetic spectrum belong to most enigmatic phenomena on the Sun. The origin of the white-light emission is not entirely understood. We aim to systematically study the visible-light emission connected to solar flares in SDO/HMI observations. We developed a code for automatic detection of kernels of flares with HMI intensity brightenings and study properties of detected candidates. The code was tuned and tested and with a little effort, it could be applied to any suitable data set. By studying a few flare examples, we found indication that HMI intensity brightening might be an artefact of the simplified procedure used to compute HMI observables.