Van Ballegooijen, A., and Cranmer, S.,
"Tangled Magnetic Fields in Solar Prominences,"
ApJ (in the press, Jan. 2010)
Max Millennium
Click on the image above for a larger version.
Flares (and CMEs) are inextricably connected to prominences and/or filament cavities in many models. This paper proposes a radically new view of prominence structure. Left: the old orderly view; right, the new sloppy view.
Note that, from a cartoon expert's point of view, the left and right panels are not so clearly related. There is no right-to-left field line at the top in the old orderly view. Is this not important from the force balance point of view? In any case it violates the first rule of cartoon flaring: identify your field lines, especially if you believe in them.
January 20, 2009