Engineering topics

Reeves, K. K.

Publications and source records attributed to Reeves, K. K..

7 records

NASA NTRS2012

Morphology Of A Hot Prominence Cavity Observed with Hinode/XRT and SDO/AIA

Prominence cavities appear as circularly shaped voids in coronal emission over polarity inversion lines where a prominence channel is straddling the solar limb. The presence of chromospheric material suspended at coronal altitudes is a common but not necessary feature within these cavities. These voids are observed to change shape as a prominence feature rotates around the limb. We use a morphological model projected in cross-sections to fit the cavity emission in Hinode/XRT passbands, and then apply temperature diagnostics to XRT and SDO/AIA data to investigate the thermal structure. We find significant evidence that the prominence cavity is hotter than the corona immediately outside the cavity boundary. This investigation follows upon "Thermal Properties of A Solar Coronal Cavity Observed with the X-ray Telescope on Hinode" by Reeves et al., 2012, ApJ, in press.

Weber, Mark A.↗

NASA NTRS2011

A Model for Magnetically Coupled Sympathetic Eruptions

Sympathetic eruptions on the Sun have been observed for several decades, but the mechanisms by which one eruption can trigger another remain poorly understood. We present a three-dimenSional MHD simulation that suggests two possible magnetic trigger mechanisms for sympathetic eruptions. We consider a configuration that contains two coronal flux ropes located within a pseudo-streamer and one rope located next to it. A sequence of eruptions is initiated by triggering the eruption of the flux rope next to the streamer. The expansion of the rope leads to two consecutive reconnection events, each of which triggers the eruption of a flux rope by removing a sufficient amount of overlying flux. The simulation qualitatively reproduces important aspects of the global sympathetic event on 2010 August 1 and provides a scenario for the so-called twin filament eruptions. The suggested mechanisms are also applicable for sympathetic eruptions occurring in other magnetic configurations.

Torok, T.↗

NASA NTRS2011

Thermal Properties and Evolution of a Coronal Cavity as Observed by the X-Ray Telescope on Hinode

Coronal cavities are voids in coronal emission often observed above high latitude filament channels. sometimes, these cavities have areas of bright x-ray emission in their centers (i.e. Hudson et al 1999). In this study, we use data from the x-ray Telescope (XRT) on Hinode to examine the thermal emission properties of a cavity observed during July 2008 that contains bright x-ray emission in its center. using ratios of XRT filters, we find evidence for elevated temperatures in the cavity center. The area of elevated temperature evolves from a ring-shaped structure at the be~inning of the observation, to an elongated structure two days later, finally appearing as a compact round source four days after the initial observation. We use a morphological model to fit the cavity emission, and find that a uniform structure running through the cavity does not fit the observations well. Instead, the observations are reproduced by modeling several short cavity "cores" with different parameters on different days. These changing core parameters may be due to some observed activity heating different parts of the cavity core at different times. We also find that core temperatures of 1.75 MK, 1.7 MK and 2.25 MK (for 19 July, 21 July and 23 July, respectively) in the model lead to structures that are consistent with the data, and that line-of-sight effects serve to lower the effective temperature derived from the filter ratio. page

Reeves, K. K.↗

NASA NTRS2010

Morphology of a Hot Coronal Cavity Core as Observed by Hinode/XRT

We follow a coronal cavity that was observed by Hinode/XRT during the summer of 2008. This cavity has a persistent area of relatively bright X-ray emission in its center. We use multifilter data from XRT to study the thermal emission from this cavity, and find that the bright center is hotter than the surrounding cavity plasma with temperatures of about 1.6 MK. We follow the morphology of this hot feature as the cavity structure rotates over the limb during the several days between July 19 - 23 2008. We find that the hot structure at first looks fairly circular, then appears to expand and elongate, and then shrinks again to a compact circular shape. We interpret this apparent change in shape as being due to the morphology of the filament channel associated with the cavity, and the change in viewing angle as the structure rotates over the limb of the Sun.

Reeves, K. K.↗

NASA NTRS2010

Space Based Observations of Coronal Cavities in Conjunction with the Total Solar Eclipse of July 2010

In conjunction with the total solar eclipse on July 11, 2010 we coordinated a campaign between ground and space based observations. Our specific goal was to augment the ground based measurement of corona) prominence cavity temperatures made using iron lines in the IR (Habbal et al. 2010 ApJ 719 1362) with measurements performed by space based instruments. Included in the campaign were Hinode/EIS, XRT and SOT, PROBA2/SWAP, SDO/AIA, SOHO/CDS and STEREO/SECCHI/EUVI, in addition to the ground based IR measurements. We plan to use a combination of line ratio and forward modeling techniques to investigate the density and temperature structure of the cavities at that time.

Kucera, T. A.↗

NASA NTRS2010

Geometric Model of a Coronal Cavity

We observed a coronal cavity from August 8-18 2007 during a multi-instrument observing campaign organized under the auspices of the International Heliophysical Year (IHY). Here we present initial efforts to model the cavity with a geometrical streamer-cavity model. The model is based the white-light streamer mode] of Gibson et a]. (2003 ), which has been enhanced by the addition of a cavity and the capability to model EUV and X-ray emission. The cavity is modeled with an elliptical cross-section and Gaussian fall-off in length and width inside the streamer. Density and temperature can be varied in the streamer and cavity and constrained via comparison with data. Although this model is purely morphological, it allows for three-dimensional, multi-temperature analysis and characterization of the data, which can then provide constraints for future physical modeling. Initial comparisons to STEREO/EUVI images of the cavity and streamer show that the model can provide a good fit to the data. This work is part of the effort of the International Space Science Institute International Team on Prominence Cavities

Kucera, Therese A.↗

NASA NTRS2010

Three-Dimensional Morphology of a Coronal Prominence Cavity

We present a three-dimensional density model of coronal prominence cavities, and a morphological fit that has been tightly constrained by a uniquely well-observed cavity. Observations were obtained as part of an International Heliophysical Year campaign by instruments from a variety of space- and ground-based observatories, spanning wavelengths from radio to soft-X-ray to integrated white light. From these data it is clear that the prominence cavity is the limb manifestation of a longitudinally-extended polar-crown filament channel, and that the cavity is a region of low density relative to the surrounding corona. As a first step towards quantifying density and temperature from campaign spectroscopic data, we establish the three-dimensional morphology of the cavity. This is critical for taking line-of-sight projection effects into account, since cavities are not localized in the plane of the sky and the corona is optically thin. We have augmented a global coronal streamer model to include a tunnel-like cavity with elliptical cross-section and a Gaussian variation of height along the tunnel length. We have developed a semi-automated routine that fits ellipses to cross-sections of the cavity as it rotates past the solar limb, and have applied it to Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI) observations from the two Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft. This defines the morphological parameters of our model, from which we reproduce forward-modeled cavity observables. We find that cavity morphology and orientation, in combination with the viewpoints of the observing spacecraft, explains the observed variation in cavity visibility for the east vs. west limbs

Gibson, S. E.↗