Small-scale eruptive filaments on the quiet sun
- Author:
- Martin, Sara F.
- Published:
- Dec 1, 1986.
- Physical Description:
- 1 electronic document
- Additional Creators:
- Hermans, Linda M.
Online Version
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- Restrictions on Access:
- Unclassified, Unlimited, Publicly available.
Free-to-read Unrestricted online access - Summary:
- A study of a little known class of eruptive events on the quiet sun was conducted. All of 61 small-scale eruptive filamentary structures were identified in a systematic survey of 32 days of H alpha time-lapse films of the quiet sun acquired at Big Bear Solar Observatory. When fully developed, these structures have an average length of 15 arc seconds before eruption. They appear to be the small-scale analog of large-scale eruptive filaments observed against the disk. At the observed rate of 1.9 small-scale eruptive features per field of view per average 7.0 hour day, the rate of occurrence of these events on the sun were estimated to be greater than 600 per 24 hour day.. The average duration of the eruptive phase was 26 minutes while the average lifetime from formation through eruption was 70 minutes. A majority of the small-scale filamentary sturctures were spatially related to cancelling magnetic features in line-of-sight photospheric magnetograms. Similar to large-scale filaments, the small-scale filamentary structures sometimes divided opposite polarity cancelling fragments but often had one or both ends terminating at a cancellation site. Their high numbers appear to reflect the much greater flux on the quiet sun. From their characteristics, evolution, and relationship to photospheric magnetic flux, it was concluded that the structures described are small-scale eruptive filaments and are a subset of all filaments.
- Other Subject(s):
- Collection:
- NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) Collection.
- Note:
- Document ID: 19870011495.
Accession ID: 87N20928.
NASA. Goddard Space Flight Center Coronal and Prominence Plasmas; p 369-375. - Terms of Use and Reproduction:
- No Copyright.
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