Contains:  Solar system body or event
Solar prominence 15s video showing 80 minutes of activity in a 100,000 km high prominence, Rick Veregin

Solar prominence 15s video showing 80 minutes of activity in a 100,000 km high prominence

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging
Solar prominence 15s video showing 80 minutes of activity in a 100,000 km high prominence, Rick Veregin

Solar prominence 15s video showing 80 minutes of activity in a 100,000 km high prominence

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

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Acquisition details

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Description

This is an 80 minute animation of the amazing prominences I previously posted in my solar image

The file is LARGE, it may be a bit slow to load. The motion captured is very complex, you need to watch the cycle multiple times to catch all that is going on.

Background Info. 
This type of prominence is known as a Hedgerow prominence (looking like an irregular row of bushes), which is relatively common, consisting of Quiet Region Filaments (QRFs). QRFs are some of the largest and longest lasting quiescent filaments, which can last several solar rotations. Mostly they are found where there is little major activity such as the so-called "Polar Crown" high latitude areas, as we see in my video. Hedgerows are often highly detailed, with considerable branching and fine structure being visible at high resolution.  Motion of material in QRFs is usually slow and small in scale, leaving the overall prominence shape unchanged. In my video, you can see close to the surface movement from West to East (Right to Left), while at the top it is East to West, with complex movements in between. It can be difficult to see the changes well, a tip is to focus on a filament and see what happens there, then try another filament area. I like to  try to imagine the magnetic field lines that are twisting up and creating these complex motions.

Large Quiescents like this one,  that exceed a height of 50,000 km, will usually break loose from the sun within 48 hours. This eruption is called a "Disparition Brusque" (sudden vanishing), and usually lasts for one to two hours. The fillments may just fade away, or they may lift off, rising to drift away from the sun, breaking up in the process. In some large eruptions, a Dispartition Brusque can produce a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). I do not know the fate of this prominence.

Capture was in SharpCap at about 55 fps 16-bit SER videos of 10 s length with a 10 ms exposure, resulting in about 550 frames for each time point. Successive video frames are generally 30 seconds apart, comprised of 10 s captures with a following 20 s delay, resulting in 153 frames in total in the final animation. Seeing was average, with a bit of haze and some wind gusts.

Processing was in AutoStakkert, where I took the best 25% of the 550 frames, using a 3X drizzle. This was followed by a batch wavelet sharpening in Registax. In Photoshop, all images were aligned manually (can’t get PIPP to align solar images well to date),  then the overexposed solar disk was inverted to black, some contrast adjustments were done, and the image was colored to red Halpha, to simulate the visual look of the prominences. Upscaling and cropping were used to produce the final gif animation from Photoshop.

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