Click for movie. Also available on YouTube.
Swept Away
|
The X-ray Telescope has been looking at coronal hole boundaries for the last few weeks. The above movie demonstrates how effective coronal holes are at maintaining their boundaries. The small active region to the right of the dark coronal hole emits a small flare which causes several loops along the edge of the coronal hole to activate as they fill with hot plasma. But the coronal hole, which is actually a stream of fast moving plasma, reclaims it's boundary by vacuuming out those loops. At the end of the movie, you can see many of the previously bright loops are dark. Coronal holes are a source of the fast solar wind and
they acts much like a fast moving river; anything sitting near the edge will get swept away.
|
(Prepared by Patricia Jibben)
| Back | Archive | Next |