Disk counterparts of type II spicules

Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope

Type II spicules are dynamic short-lived chromospheric jets seen at the limb (the Sun's edge). They live only for some minutes and have a swaying and torsional motion. They are believed to transfer mass from the chromosphere to the transition region and corona. They loosely follow the magnetic field lines sticking out of the Sun.

The movie shows the disk counterparts of type II spicules, the so-called Rapid Blue-shifted Events (RBEs), inside a coronal hole (region of open field) near the center of the solar disk.  The observations were performed on June 15, 2008 using the CRISP spectropolarimeter at the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope. The left panel shows images in the far blue wing of the H-alpha spectral line, at an offset -60 km/s from line center. RBEs are the short-lived and fast-moving dark streaks that seem to originate from the cluster of bright points in the middle. The right panel shows H-alpha line core images of the same region.

To download the movie, click HERE

Movie credit: Luc Rouppe van der Voort, Ada Ortiz (ITA, University of Oslo)

Publication: Rouppe van der Voort et al., 2009, ApJ 705, 272