An X1.3 Flare and a Cool View of Plasma Leaving the Sun

On March 30, 2022, active region 12975 was the site of an X1.3 flare. Here is the daily movie in AIA 171 from that day. AR 12975 is in the upper right quadrant to the right of the far more impressive looking coronal loops above AR 12976.

During the day we adjusted the fine guidance telescope, which causes the images to bounce a little bit. The flare starts at 17:26 UTC and ends at 17:46 UTC. What I found cool about this flare was the lass of plasma just south of the flare site. Here are two stills from the movie.

On the left the arrow points at some haze in the AIA 171 image. In the right image the arrow points at about the same place (there is a bright streak just to the right to get you oriented), but the image is less hazy where plasma has left the Sun.

The material that left the Sun isn't all that close to the flare. But you can see in the movie that the haze goes away just after the flare. Look at the movie a few times and you will see the haze disappear.

There is also an excellent coronal cavity display at about 4 o'clock on the limb. These cavities are usually much slower in their evolution.

It is already a great Solar Cycle!

Computational Modeling for 3D Data Reconstruction of Solar Coronal Magnetic Fields

Nat Mathews / NASA GSFC

March 2, 2022, 3:30pm Eastern US Time

Abstract: The solar corona supports a variety of magnetic structures that constitute major drivers of space weather. Such a rope of magnetic field can twist and break to launch the plasma locked inside it in a Coronal Mass Ejection. The analysis and prediction of events of this nature is a major goal of the heliophysics community, and reconstructing the current state of the coronal magnetic field is a central component.

Determining the shape and structure of the magnetic fields arcing through the solar corona is a form of nonlinear inverse problem. The goal of this work is to provide a solid foundation for the construction of coronal inversion frameworks. First, a full working version of such an inverse framework is presented. For a variety of reasons, the parameterized forward model is deemed the component of this full inverse model most needing improvement. Subsequent work lays out a brand new methodology for computation of the forward model. The result is a construction that addresses many of the traditional issues around coronal field modeling. Future work extending the approach with Physics-Informed Neural Nets is discussed.</p>

Bio: Nat Mathews recently completed their PhD in applied mathematics with a focus on coronal physics at CU Boulder, advised by Natasha Flyer and Sarah Gibson. They are now a postdoctoral fellow at NASA Goddard.