XRT Picture of the Week (XPOW)

XRT Picture of the Week (XPOW)

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2013 May 15

Click for GIFs of all 3 flares or here for movie. Also available on YouTube.
Note that the images on the left are 2x magnified compared to those on the right.

Three X-Flares in 24 Hours!

Wow! The active region that just rotated over the east limb (11748) has already produced four x-flares. The second of these is shown above. Click to see the first three, which all occurred within 24 hours of each other. The four flares registered as X1.7, X2.8, X3.2, and X1.2 on the GOES scale, which is based on the X-Ray flux observed by the GOES satellite. The images on the left were taken with XRT's thick aluminum filter, which is sensitive to material around 15 million Kelvin. This allows us to peer into the flare's core and see things like the fascinating brightening exhibited here, beneath the main flare arch. The observations on the right were taken with a thinner filter that sees much cooler plasma around 1 million Kelvin. We overexpose these images to reveal fainter structures outside the core, like the CME that can be seen lifting off at the onset of the movie. Click here to see AIA's view of these events, and stay tuned to this page for more XRT observations of this region, which will hopefully continue to excite!


Keywords: Flare, CME, Limb
Filters: Al_thick, Al_mesh


(Prepared by Patrick McCauley)

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