Search results for "coronal heating"
showing 10 items of 10 documents
A coronal explosion on the flare star CN Leonis
2008
We present simultaneous high-temporal and high-spectral resolution observations at optical and soft X-ray wavelengths of the nearby flare star CN Leo. During our observing campaign a major flare occurred, raising the star's instantaneous energy output by almost three orders of magnitude. The flare shows the often observed impulsive behavior, with a rapid rise and slow decay in the optical and a broad soft X-ray maximum about 200 seconds after the optical flare peak. However, in addition to this usually encountered flare phenomenology we find an extremely short (~2 sec) soft X-ray peak, which is very likely of thermal, rather than non-thermal nature and temporally coincides with the optical …
Probing the physics of the solar atmosphere with the Multi-slit Solar Explorer (MUSE): I. Coronal Heating
2022
The Multi-slit Solar Explorer (MUSE) is a proposed NASA MIDEX mission, currently in Phase A, composed of a multi-slit EUV spectrograph (in three narrow spectral bands centered around 171A, 284A, and 108A) and an EUV context imager (in two narrow passbands around 195A and 304A). MUSE will provide unprecedented spectral and imaging diagnostics of the solar corona at high spatial (<0.5 arcsec), and temporal resolution (down to ~0.5s) thanks to its innovative multi-slit design. By obtaining spectra in 4 bright EUV lines (Fe IX 171A , Fe XV 284A, Fe XIX-Fe XXI 108A) covering a wide range of transition region and coronal temperatures along 37 slits simultaneously, MUSE will for the first time …
Contribution of phase-mixing of Alfvén waves to coronal heating in multi-harmonic loop oscillations
2018
This research has received funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (UK) through the consolidated grant ST/N000609/1 and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program ( grant agreement No. 647214). This work is supported by the European Research Council under the SeismoSun Research Project No. 321141 (DJP). This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 724326). This work used the DiRAC Data Centric system at Durham University, operated by the Institute for Computational Cosmology on behalf o…
Reconnection nanojets in the solar corona
2020
P.A. acknowledges STFC support from grant numbers ST/R004285/2 and ST/T000384/1 and support from the International Space Science Institute, Bern, Switzerland to the International Teams on ‘Implications for coronal heating and magnetic fields from coronal rain observations and modeling’ and ‘Observed Multi-Scale Variability of Coronal Loops as a Probe of Coronal Heating’. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 647214). P.T. was also supported by contracts 8100002705 and SP02H1701R from Lockheed-Martin to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), and NASA c…
On the Coronal Temperature in Solar Microflares
2020
We present a study of solar imaging and spectral observations of a microflare, focusing on the temperature diagnostics provided by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory, and the Extreme-Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) on board Hinode. Our data analysis, in particular from the emission in the 131 and 94 Å channels, indicates that the heated plasma reaches temperatures of ≿10 MK, at odds with a previous analysis of the same event, and we discuss the reason for the discrepancy. A particularly interesting aspect is the likely presence of the Fe XXIII 263.76 Å line, though weak, in EIS spectra in the early phases of the event, supporting the presen…
Modeling a coronal loop heated by magnetohydrodynamic turbulence nanoflares
2005
We model the hydrodynamic evolution of the plasma confined in a coronal loop, 30,000 km long, subject to the heating of nanoflares due to intermittent magnetic dissipative events in the MHD turbulence produced by loop footpoint motions. We use the time-dependent distribution of energy dissipation along the loop obtained from a hybrid shell model, occurring for a magnetic field of about 10 G in the corona; the relevant heating per unit volume along the loop is used in the Palermo-Harvard loop plasma hydrodynamic model. We describe the results, focusing on the effects produced by the most intense heat pulses, which lead to loop temperatures between 1 and 1.5 MK.
The Corona of the Sun as a Star
2006
We study the physics of the solar corona as a whole, i.e. of the Sun as a Star, in order to understand its global features and to provide a template for stellar coronae. In this process we strive to understand the features of various structures which compose the solar corona. This process in not straightforward given the problems of observing the Sun as a whole: e.g., no recent X‐ray wide‐band, medium‐resolution, spectrum of the Sun is avaible, unlike stars and no X‐ray spectral monitoring of the Sun at various activity phases is available. The presentation will discuss our work in this field; we present the method we have devised, based on Yohkoh/SXT data, to derive the Differential Emissi…
The flaring and quiescent components of the solar corona
2008
The solar corona is a template to understand stellar activity. The Sun is a moderately active star, and its corona differs from active stars: active stellar coronae have a double-peaked EM(T) with the hot peak at 8-20 MK, while the non flaring solar corona has one peak at 1-2 MK. We study the average contribution of flares to the solar EM(T) to investigate indirectly the hypothesis that the hot peak of the EM(T) of active stellar coronae is due to a large number of unresolved solar-like flares, and to infer properties on the flare distribution from nano- to macro-flares. We measure the disk-integrated time-averaged emission measure, EM_F(T), of an unbiased sample of solar flares analyzing u…
Large Scale Properties of Coronal Heating along the Solar Cycle
2010
We discuss various studies of the global properties of coronal heating. Some of them find power laws tying the X-ray luminosity with the magnetic flux of individual structures, of the whole Sun, and of active solar-type stars. Others are based on methods to model the Sun as an X-ray star. We also briefly discuss solar-like active stars and how the Sun fits in the whole scenario. We use a new model, including all flares, of the Sun as an X-ray star to describe the evolution of the corona along the solar cycle and the implications on the heating of closed coronal structures. We point out that, as activity increases, more heating is released into the confined coronal plasma and such a heating …
Sub-Structuring Dynamics and Heating in Dense Coronal Structures
2005
Dense coronal plasma is confined in magnetic loops, the building blocks of the bright X-ray corona. We overview recent findings from the analysis of confined coronal plasma observed with SoHO and TRACE and its interpretation. Internal substructuring, mass transport and dynamics, and heating processes are discussed.