Author ORCID Identifier
James McAteer:
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1493-101X
Jack Jenkins:
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8975-812X
Valentin Martinez Pillet:
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7764-6895
Debi Prasad Choudhary:
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9308-3639
David Long:
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3137-0277
Document Type
Journal Article
Journal Article Version
Final Version / Publisher's PDF (peer-reviewed)
Publication Date
2-1-2022
Abstract
Solar filaments exist as stable structures for extended periods of time before many of them form the core of a coronal mass ejection (CME). We examine the properties of an erupting filament on 2017 May 29-30 with high-resolution He i 10830 angstrom and H alpha spectra from the Dunn Solar Telescope, full-disk Dopplergrams of He i 10830 angstrom from the Chromospheric Telescope, and EUV and coronograph data from SDO and STEREO. Pre-eruption line-of-sight velocities from an inversion of He i with the HAZEL code exhibit coherent patches of 5 Mm extent that indicate counter-streaming and/or buoyant behavior. During the eruption, individual, aligned threads appear in the He i velocity maps. The distribution of velocities evolves from Gaussian to strongly asymmetric. The maximal optical depth of He i 10830 angstrom decreased from tau = 1.75 to 0.25, the temperature increased by 13 kK, and the average speed and width of the filament increased from 0 to 25 km s(-1) and 10 to 20 Mm, respectively. All data sources agree that the filament rose with an exponential acceleration reaching 7.4 m s(-2) that increased to a final velocity of 430 km s(-1) at 22:24 UT; a CME was associated with this filament eruption. The properties during the eruption favor a kink/torus instability, which requires the existence of a flux rope. We conclude that full-disk chromospheric Dopplergrams can be used to trace the initial phase of on-disk filament eruptions in real time, which might potentially be useful for modeling the source of any subsequent CMEs.
Published in
Astrophysical Journal
DOI
10.3847/1538-4357/ac3a04
Keywords
Solar filament eruptions; Solar filaments; Solar coronal mass ejections; Spectropolarimetry; Quiet solar chromosphere
Department / Organizational Unit
Astronomy
Copyright Notice
© 2022 S. Wang, J. Jenkins, K. Muglach, et al., reuse allowed according to Creative Commons license.
License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Wang, S., Jenkins, J. M., Muglach, K., Pillet, V. M., Beck, C., Long, D. M., Choudhary, D. P., & McAteer, J. (2022). Velocities of an erupting filament. Astrophysical Journal, 926(1). https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac3a04