Chromospheric Anemone Jets as Evidence of Ubiquitous Reconnection
Matsumoto, Takuma; Shibata, Kazunari; Nishizuka, Naoto; Tsuneta, Saku; Shimizu, Toshifumi; Okamoto, Takenori J.; Lites, Bruce W.; Berger, Thomas E.; Ichimoto, Kiyoshi; Katsukawa, Yukio; Nagata, Shin'ichi; Shine, Richard A.; Suematsu, Yoshinori; Tarbell, Theodore D.; Title, Alan M.; Kitai, Reizaburo; Otsuji, Kenichi; Nakamura, Tahei; Watanabe, Hiroko; Kawate, Tomoko; UeNo, Satoru; Nozawa, Satoshi
Japan, United States
Abstract
The heating of the solar chromosphere and corona is a long-standing puzzle in solar physics. Hinode observations show the ubiquitous presence of chromospheric anemone jets outside sunspots in active regions. They are typically 3 to 7 arc seconds = 2000 to 5000 kilometers long and 0.2 to 0.4 arc second = 150 to 300 kilometers wide, and their velocity is 10 to 20 kilometers per second. These small jets have an inverted Y-shape, similar to the shape of x-ray anemone jets in the corona. These features imply that magnetic reconnection similar to that in the corona is occurring at a much smaller spatial scale throughout the chromosphere and suggest that the heating of the solar chromosphere and corona may be related to small-scale ubiquitous reconnection.