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Multi-Wavelength Eclipse Observations of a Quiescent Prominence

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Abstract

We construct the maps of temperatures, geometrical thicknesses, electron densities and gas pressures in a quiescent prominence. For this we use the RGB signal of the prominence visible-light emission detected during the total solar eclipse of 1 August 2008 in Mongolia and quasi-simultaneous Hα spectra taken at Ondřejov Observatory. The method of disentangling the electron density and geometrical (effective) thickness was described by Jejčič and Heinzel (Solar Phys. 254, 89 – 100, 2009) and is used here for the first time to analyse the spatial variations of prominence parameters. For the studied prominence we obtained the following range of parameters: temperature 6000 – 15 000 K, effective thickness 200 – 15000 km, electron density 5×109 – 1011 cm−3 and gas pressure 0.02 – 0.2 dyn cm−2 (assuming a fixed ionisation degree n p/n H=0.5). The electron density increases towards the bottom of the prominence, which we explain by an enhanced photoionisation due to the incident solar radiation. To confirm this, we construct a two-dimensional radiative-transfer model with realistic prominence illumination.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support from grant 209/12/0906 of the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic and from the institutional project RVO67985815. Visit of SJ to Ondřejov Observatory was funded in frame of a mutual agreement between Slovenian SAZU and Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Support of Ljubjana University is also highly appreciated. MZ acknowledge the financial support provided by MICINN and FEDER funds under grant AYA2011-22846. The authors thank J. Leško for making the spectral observations with HSFA-2 instrument and M. Bárta and P. Schwartz for their technical help. The authors would like to thank the referee for very valuable comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    S. Jejčič

  2. Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences, Ondřejov, Czech Republic

    P. Heinzel, M. Zapiór, S. Gunár & P. Kotrč

  3. Departament de Física, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

    M. Zapiór

  4. Institute of Mathematics, Brno University of Technology, Brno, Czech Republic

    M. Druckmüller

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  1. S. Jejčič
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  2. P. Heinzel
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  3. M. Zapiór
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  4. M. Druckmüller
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  5. S. Gunár
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  6. P. Kotrč
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Correspondence to S. Jejčič.

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Jejčič, S., Heinzel, P., Zapiór, M. et al. Multi-Wavelength Eclipse Observations of a Quiescent Prominence. Sol Phys 289, 2487–2501 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-014-0482-1

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