Myriads of spicules going up and down (1/2)                    

Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope

These two images show the solar limb in the light of one of the strongest spectral lines in the solar spectrum: H-alpha at 6563 Å.

The observations were made with the Crisp Imaging Spectropolarimeter at the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope on June 27, 2010. The two images show very similar features despite the fact that they are taken in the blue and red wings of the line. The Doppler shifts of the light to the blue and red indicate the presence of plasma flowing towards and away from the observer at the same location and time. This type of data has been used to discover the presence of twisted structures carrying flows and waves in the solar chromosphere. The dark features on the disk are caused by chromospheric spicules, jets of gas that are rapidly propelled upward into the atmosphere of the Sun. At any one time more than 100,000 spicules are present in the solar atmosphere.

Image credit: Luc Rouppe van der Voort and Patrick Antolin (ITA, University of Oslo)