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"By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself." ***




"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened." ***

Sabrina L. Savage

Physics Ph.D. Student
Montana State University

Last Updated:   06/23/09

"A child of five would understand this. Someone fetch a child of five." -- Anonymous

XRT Flare 080409


If your browser does not support embedding the movies below will not play on this page. Open them to view.



Flare 04-09-2008:   Left: Original (Exposure-filtered and Byte-Scaled).   Right: Sharpened (Exposure-filtered, ~ Flattened, ~ Run-Mean-Differenced, Byte-Scaled).

The movie will loop backward to make movements even clearer. Watch for flows moving in and out from the Sun (count at least 3) and some seeming to originate from a common region just before the large time gap!




Open this movie:   (Quicktime .mov)




 
Annotated Set:   This annotated image set points out some difficult-to-discern features. They are by no means conclusive — merely a rough guideline for your eyes to follow. The first 100 frames show the CME lift off. Frames 100 — 280 have been exposure-filtered.


The left two panels are of the original data which has been byte-scaled.

The right two panels are the original data which has been merged with the sharpened data (~flattened, ~run-mean diffed, byte-scaled) beginning on frame 100.

The byte- and tv-scaling between the left and right sets are different to emphasize different features (Left: higher features, Right: low shrinking loops).



Open this movie:   (Quicktime .mov)


Annotated Feature Descriptions:

1. 100-280: (Dark blue dashed line) Current sheet?

2. 100-216: (Bright green dashed line) One leg of the erupted filament? (i.e. "David's Leg") Note that I do not feel confident that I tagged the "crossing of the current sheet" perfectly.

3. 100-223: (Dark purple box) Area of easily discernible shrinking loops.

4. 195-211: (2nd bright green dashed line) Another leg of the erupted filament?

5. 178-183: (Pink box) Outflow?

6. 203-220: (Yellow box) Outflow pair?!

7. 245-260: (Dark green box) Very faint and diffuse outflow?

8. 233-280: (Cyan dashed line) Shrinking looop? The bottom-most leg is difficult to track frame by frame.


Many of these features are easiest to see if the movie is played back and forth.





 

Manual Tracking:   This image set was produced by manually tracking the flows (both in and out from the solar surface). The two left panels are of the original data with different bytescaling. The middle right panel is the sharpened data from above. The right-most panel is the sharpened data after applying hist_equal.



Open this movie:   (Quicktime .mov)






Track overlays of the manually-tracked flows from above.




Statistical Velocity Information  (Info file)

Statistics (13 total; 13 good)
Frame Counts per GOOD Flow: 4 - 28: median = 12

Total time frame: 11:00:24.268 - 17:31:55.020
Total duration: 391.51 min

Flow detection time frame: 11:04:24.347 - 17:18:54.762
Flow detection duration: 374.51 min


ALL AVERAGE CENTROID Speeds [km/sec]:
  Range: 13.26 - 202.60
  Mean: 96.82
  SD: 56.85
  Median: 103.44

ALL INITIAL CENTROID Speeds [km/sec]:
  Range: 16.93 - 225.79
  Mean: 114.69
  SD: 68.80
  Median: 89.97






Left:  Average Velocities;  Right:  Initial Velocities (determined from a 2-degree polynomial fit)






Left:  Average Velocities with Time;  Right:  Initial Velocities with Time




Flow Number Depicted



Left:  Average Velocities with Time;  Right:  Initial Velocities with Time




*** Most of the quotes on this site are attributed to Douglas Adams. If you haven't read Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I highly recommend doing so for its brilliantly comedic dry wit. Magrathea!