Beautiful looking Active Regions observed by XRT. Watch the movie above or click here for the youtube version.
Stellar Anemones: AR13761
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Solar activity continues to rise as the Sun approaches maximum in the current solar cycle. However, among the forests of asymmetrical active regions (ARs), floats a beautiful, symmetrical active region. Similar to its namesake, an anemone, the loops of the AR fan out from a central point. These delicate features are often found near or in coronal holes¹, however, AR13761 chose to place itself beside a fellow active region instead. Coronal holes are areas on the Sun that look empty when looking at the Sun’s outermost layer, the corona. The holes are far from empty and increase the solar wind speed. Anemone active regions have symmetric, east-west magnetic fields while other structures vary.¹ ² This makes these features more unique. AR13761 was a beta-delta type region meaning that the spot is bipolar (two poles) with complex structure within the sunspots. There were 7 C-class flares and 1 M-class flare, making this anemone calmer than some of the more recent active regions. Solar and space weather scientists study these regions to determine changes in the solar wind and the unique magnetic structure. The previous satellite in the Japan-United States-United Kingdom solar satellite series, Yohkoh (Solar-A), studied the anemones with the Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT). Now, Hinode (Solar-B) captures similar structures with the X-ray Telescope (XRT), a similar instrument to SXT. The video uses the Al-poly filter which captures flare loops. Sources: 1.) Asai, A., Shibata, K., Hara, H., Nariaki, N. 2008. Characteristics of anemone active regions appearing in coronal holes observed with the Yohkoh soft x-ray telescope. The Astrophysical Journal. doi:10.1086/523842 2.) Sharma, R., Cid, C. 2020. Source-region characteristics of anemone active regions in the ascending phase of solar cycle 24. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 642(A233). https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202038927 Keywords: AR Tracking, Flare Filters: Al_Poly |
(Prepared by Rhiannon Fleming and Aki Takeda )
The XRT instrument team is comprised of SAO, NASA, JAXA, and NAOJ.
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