Click for before & after movie.
Cutest. Loop. Ever.
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XRT has observed what one scientist is calling the cutest loop ever seen in the corona. While coronal loops are not generally considered cute, this one is very bright and exceptionally tiny. Tiny things are cute; this loop is tiny. Therefore, this loop is cute. Inductive reasoning at its finest! The footpoints of the loop are less than 7,000 km apart, meaning that the only planet we could fit beneath the arch is Mercury (sorry Pluto). Despite being dimunitive, the little loop outshone the entire active region housing it by more than double for a glorious 30 minutes. It even saturated XRT's camera when it flared up, driving exposure times down by over a factor of 50. Click the movie above for a longer one that shows the active region before and after the loop brightening. Keywords: Flare Filters: Be_thin |
(Prepared by Patrick McCauley)
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