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Session: Heliophysics and the Solar System

Name: Dr. Costis Gontikakis (Academy of Athens, RCAAM)
Coauthors: Georgoulis M.K. (RCAAM, Academy of Athens)
Kontogiannis I. (Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam, Germany)
Type: Poster
Title: Study of the evolution of hot plasma emission prior to flares and CMEs
Abstract:

Solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are the most energetic solar phenomena. The mechanisms causing these events are not yet fully understood. It is likely that major flare events and CMEs are associated with magnetic flux ropes, i.e., twisted structures that are formed in the triggering active regions, and are filled with hot plasma of ~5 million Kelvin. This plasma can be detected in active regions in the pre-flare state via EUV filtergrams taken by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) telescope, on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). In this study, we use a combination of AIA filtergrams to derive the emission of the hot Fe XVIII ion (formation temperature~7 million Kelvin) spectral line. We studied the emission prior to ten flares (M-class and X-class), aiming to detect flux-rope related Fe XVIII emission and examine whether this emission is typical before the onset of major flares.