Click on the image above for a larger .gif version.

Coronal seismology might seem to be fairly far removed, as an academic discipline, from flare physics. But it turns out that some of the best waves are excited by flares. The ones that propagate in the solar corona have a strong association with type II bursts and the powerful flares associated with them. This cartoon shows how a "line-tied" loop - or more generally, a whole magnetic structure of which the loop is a part - can jiggle in a kink mode as the result of a global coronal wave. The authors of the semi-popular article from which we got this colorful (if not gaudy) item also published a Living Review of the topic at about the same time.

22 November 2011