ERUPTIONS FROM SOLAR EPHEMERAL REGIONS AS AN EXTENSION OF THE SIZE DISTRIBUTION OF CORONAL MASS EJECTIONS
- Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, Palo Alto, CA 94304 (United States)
Observations of the quiet solar corona in the 171 A ({approx}1 MK) passband of the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) often show disruptions of the coronal part of small-scale ephemeral bipolar regions that resemble the phenomena associated with coronal mass ejections (CMEs) on much larger scales: ephemeral regions exhibit flare-like brightenings, rapidly rising filaments carrying absorbing material at chromospheric temperatures, or the temporary dimming of the surrounding corona. I analyze all available TRACE observing sequences between 1998 April 1 and 2009 September 30 with full-resolution 171 A image sequences spanning a day or more within 500 arcsec of disk center, observing essentially the quiet Sun with good exposures and relatively low background. Ten such data sets are identified between 2000 and 2008, spanning 570 hr of observing with a total of 17,133 exposures. Eighty small-scale coronal eruptions are identified. Their size distribution forms a smooth extension of the distribution of angular widths of CMEs, suggesting that the eruption frequency for bipolar magnetic regions is essentially scale free over at least 2 orders of magnitude, from eruptions near the arcsecond resolution limit of TRACE to the largest CMEs observed in the inner heliosphere. This scale range may be associated with the properties of the nested set of ranges of connectivity in the magnetic field in which increasingly large and energetic events can reach higher and higher into the corona until the heliosphere is reached.
- OSTI ID:
- 21394425
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 710, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/710/2/1480; ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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