1. A TRANSITION REGION EXPLOSIVE EVENT OBSERVED IN He II WITH THE MOSES SOUNDING ROCKET
- Author
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Fox, Lewis, Kankelborg, Charles C., and Thomas, Roger J.
- Abstract
Transition region explosive events (EEs) have been observed with slit spectrographs since at least 1975, most commonly in lines of C IV (1548 A, 1550 A) and Si IV (1393 A, 1402 A). We report what we believe to be the first observation of a transition region EE in He II 304 A. With the Multi-Order Solar EUV Spectrograph (MOSES) sounding rocket, a novel slitless imaging spectrograph, we are able to see the spatial structure of the event. We observe a bright core expelling two jets that are distinctly non-collinear, in directions that are not anti-parallel. The jets have sky-plane velocities of order 75 km s-1 and line-of-sight velocities of +75 km s-1 (blue) and -30 km s-1 (red). The core is a region of high non-thermal Doppler broadening, characteristic of EEs, with maximal broadening 380 km s-1 FWHM. It is possible to resolve the core broadening into red and blue line-of-sight components of maximum Doppler velocities +160 km s-1 and -220 km s-1. The event lasts more than 150 s. Its properties correspond to the larger, long-lived, and more energetic EEs observed in other wavelengths.
- Published
- 2010