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Reconnection nanojets in the solar corona
Antolin, Patrick; Pagano, Paolo; Testa, Paola +2 more
The solar corona is shaped and mysteriously heated to millions of degrees by the Sun's magnetic field. It has long been hypothesized that the heating results from a myriad of tiny magnetic energy outbursts called nanoflares, driven by the fundamental process of magnetic reconnection. Misaligned magnetic field lines can break and reconnect, produci…
High-resolution observations of flare precursors in the low solar atmosphere
Xu, Yan; Cao, Wenda; Liu, Chang +9 more
Solar flares are generally believed to be powered by free magnetic energy stored in the corona1, but the build up of coronal energy alone may be insufficient to trigger the flare to occur2. The flare onset mechanism is a critical but poorly understood problem, insights into which could be gained from small-scale energy releas…
Detection of nanoflare-heated plasma in the solar corona by the FOXSI-2 sounding rocket
Krucker, Säm; Narukage, Noriyuki; Glesener, Lindsay +4 more
The processes that heat the solar and stellar coronae to several million kelvins, compared with the much cooler photosphere (5,800 K for the Sun), are still not well known1. One proposed mechanism is heating via a large number of small, unresolved, impulsive heating events called nanoflares2. Each event would heat and cool qu…