STEREO SECCHI Stereoscopic Observations Constraining the Initiation of Polar Coronal Jets

By S. Patsourakos, Etienne Pariat, A. Vourlidas, S. Antiochos, J. Wuelser. 2008

134 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report on the first stereoscopic observations of polar coronal jets made by the EUVI/SECCHI imagers on board the twin STEREO spacecraft. The significantly separated viewpoints (~11°) allowed us to infer the 3D dynamics and morphology of a well-defined EUV coronal jet for the first time. Triangulations of the jet’s location in simultaneous image pairs led to the true 3D position and thereby its kinematics. Initially the jet ascends slowly at ≈10-20 km s−1 and then, after an apparent “jump” takes place, it accelerates impulsively to velocities exceeding 300 km s−1 with accelerations exceeding the solar gravity. Helical structure is the most important geometrical feature of the jet which shows evidence of untwisting. The jet structure appears strikingly different from each of the two STEREO viewpoints: face-on in one viewpoint and edge-on in the other. This provides conclusive evidence that the observed helical structure is real and does not result from possible projection effects of single-viewpoint observations. The clear demonstration of twisted structure in polar jets compares favorably with synthetic images from a recent MHD simulation of jets invoking magnetic untwisting as their driving mechanism. Therefore, the latter can be considered as a viable mechanism for the initiation of polar jets.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fe857ba3a9dce33155828e9fcfd002f4bd49746b

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

THREE-DIMENSIONAL MODELING OF QUASI-HOMOLOGOUS SOLAR JETS (2010, methodology): “The PAD09 model succeeded in reproducing the 3D helical structure of a particular event observed in the UV (Patsourakos et al. 2008).”
How Many CMEs Have Flux Ropes? Deciphering the Signatures of Shocks, Flux Ropes, and Prominences in Coronagraph Observations of CMEs (2012, methodology): “JetCMEs also contain helical structures as recent research has shown (Patsourakos et al., 2008; Pariat, Antiochos, and DeVore, 2009; Nisticò et al., 2010).”
Characteristics of EUV Coronal Jets Observed with STEREO/SECCHI (2009, methodology): “Another plausible interpretation would be that ET-type jets could require some build-up of magnetic energy and then an instability like discussed by Patsourakos et al. (2008), Pariat, Antiochos, and DeVore (2009).”
ON A CORONAL BLOWOUT JET: THE FIRST OBSERVATION OF A SIMULTANEOUSLY PRODUCED BUBBLE-LIKE CME AND A JET-LIKE CME IN A SOLAR EVENT (2011, background): “In a few cases, coronal jets exhibit obvious unwinding motions around the main axis (e.g., Alexander & Fletcher 1999; Patsourakos et al. 2008; Liu et al. 2009a; Shen et al. 2011b), as well as in small-scale explosive events (e.g., Curdt & Tian 2011).”
A MODEL FOR SOLAR POLAR JETS (2009, methodology): “…several classic geometrical features observed in jets, including the “inverse Y” or ”Eiffel tower” shape, the drift of the jet axis, the 3D helical structures (Patsourakos et al. 2008), and the recent observation of Alfvén waves within polar-hole jets (Cirtain et al. 2007; Savcheva et al. 2007).”