A filament suddenly becomes visible in X-ray during eruption. Taken just 3 hours apart with the same filter and exposure time, the image on the left shows no sign of the suddenly very bright filament visible on the right.
A Suddenly X-Ray Visible Filament
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When viewed in Ultra-Violet wavelengths, such as with AIA, a filament appears dark in contrast to the brighter solar disk. Filaments are large regions of cooler plasma suspended above the solar surface by magentic fields. They can often become unstable, as happened here on July 15th, and release that contained plasma out into space in the form of a filament eruption and coronal mass ejection (CME). When viewed in X-ray, as with XRT, it can harder to spot these filaments on disk. The lack of high-energy contrast between the suspended material and the solar disk means filaments aren't as obvious to spot. However, during an eruption with a large release of energy, suddenly the filamnet glows brightly in our X-ray vision. Both of the above images were taken at the same exposure time and with the same filter, but over the course of just 3 hours the massive filament goes from almost undetectable to lighting up across the solar disk! It is rare to capture something so sudden and dynamic on the Sun. The result was a large CME hurled off the Sun, though it didn't end up coming towards Earth at all. Keywords: Filament, CME Filters: Al_Poly |
(Prepared by Lucas Guliano)
The XRT instrument team is comprised of SAO, NASA, JAXA, and NAOJ.
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