Solar Prominences – An Intriguing Phenomenon

Abstract

The article starts with an autobiographical account, where the author relates how his several study-trips abroad gradually led him to the study of solar physics in general, and prominences particularly.The article then treats the historical development of prominence research, from the "speculative" period, before the introduction of photography and spectroscopy around 1860. These techniques led to a new understanding of the nature of prominences as "hot clouds in the solar atmosphere". However, it was only after about 1960, when the magnetic field in prominences could be measured, that the more complete picture of prominences could be understood, a view greatly helped by space missions, the result of which was the realization that the solar atmosphere is crisscrossed by electric currents that lead to magnetic flux tubes of nearly all imaginable sizes.The article ends with a discussion of the disparition-brusque phenomenon, and the closely related coronal mass ejections.

On the Dynamic Nature of a Quiescent Prominence Observed by IRIS and MSDP Spectrographs

“…Prominences have been observed for more than a century but they still hide many mysteries, particularly in their dynamic nature (Tandberg-Hanssen 1995). Several reviews describe the physical parameters of the prominence cool plasma embeded in the magnetic field (Labrosse et al 2010;Mackay et al 2010;Tandberg-Hanssen 2011;Schmieder et al 2014a). Nevertheless, many questions remain with no answers.…”

The magnetic field configuration of a solar prominence inferred from spectropolarimetric observations in the He i 10 830 Å triplet

“…Locally, they consist of fine and vertically oriented plasma structures, so-called threads, that evolve continually (e.g., Engvold 1976;Zirker et al 1994). Recent ob-A movie is available in electronic form at http://www.aanda.org 1 There are many papers about solar prominences, but we recommend that the reader first go through the historical work of Einar Tandberg-Hanssen (e.g., Tandberg-Hanssen 1998, 2011 servations taken with the Hinode satellite have revolutionized our knowledge of the fine-scale structuring and dynamics of quiescent prominences; for instance, plasma oscillations, supersonic downflows, or plasma instabilities like the Rayleigh-Taylor instability in prominence bubbles (Berger et al 2008(Berger et al , 2010Chae et al 2008;Okamoto et al 2007). …”

Some characteristics of Coronal Mass Ejections associated with Prominence Eruptions

“…It is well established that quite often prominence eruptions are associated with coronal mass ejections. Several researcher have already done extensive studies about prominence eruptions and coronal mass ejections [2,[8][9][10][11][12][13][14]15]. In view of above it seems worthwhile to make a detailed study of Coronal Mass Ejections associated with prominence eruption of SOHO Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/actaastro era.…”