Click on a grieving ghost for a movie. High resolution movie available on YouTube.
The Faces of Grieving Ghosts
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Halloween is just around the corner. Maybe I was influenced by the spooky decorations around town, but I found faces of ghosts hidden in X-ray images of the Sun. Their real identities are active regions 12434, 12436, and 12437, all observed in mid-October of 2015. The center image was taken with a wide field of view, which covers the Eastern half of the solar disk and includes all three active regions listed above. To see the grieving ghost the original image was rotated so that East is up. The face of a suffering ghost is revealed with AR12437 (the ghost's right eye), AR12436 (left eye) and AR12434 (mouth). The image on the left is the close-up of the AR12437 (North is up, this time) observed on 20 October 2015. This image looks like another face of a sobbing ghost. The tears running out of its right eye are the ejection of plasma associated with a C1.1 flare from this region.
The image on the right is the AR12434 (North is up) observed on 16 October 2015. This
movie was made three days before the time the center image was taken. This looks like a
portrait of a troubled ghost. Tear drops are falling out from its right eye, and in the
end the ghost blows out a fire-breath (a C4.2 flare).
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(Prepared by Aki Takeda)
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