This image was taken the day before the filament erupted. It shows the filament at pretty much its maximum size. However, you can see that the magnetic field around it is pretty much random. It's very hard to make out a pattern.

This is a zoomed-in image of the filament, and it still appears that the field is fairly random. It's very hard to make out any pattern around the filament that is not present everywhere.

Here we have an even more zoomed in picture of just a small part of the filament, and still I cannot point out any significant patterns in the magnetic field around the area of the filament. It looks like any real pattern must be more subtle than I can pick out using standard techniques. Interesting though, there was another filament on the disk, which does show a good correlation between the magnetic field and the hydrogen-alpha image. Have a look:

Now this one IS a beauty isn't it? I'm thinking of putting together a movie of the formation of this one.

Back to the 1999 Filament summary