Click for full size.
Beautiful Candle Flame Cusp on the Limb
|
In mid-July, XRT captured this spectacular cusp-shaped arcade (a collection of nearby magnetic field lines) as NOAA active region 11520 rotated onto the west limb. These features are thought to indicate a site of ongoing magnetic reconnection above the cusp, which produces a sunward plasma flow along the cusp arcade that heats and enhances the loops such that they emit the soft x-ray emission seen here by XRT. The extent of the candle flame in the left image is about 167,000 km beyond the limb or about 13x Earth's diameter. To increase signal-to-noise, these images are summations of 16 images with ~0.18s exposure times. Previous XPOWS for similar structures can be found here: [1] [2] [3] [Filters: Ti-poly] |
(Prepared by Patrick McCauley)
| Back | Archive | Next |