Successive Solar Eruptions Triggered by the Collision of Two Small Sunspots with Opposite Polarities and Motional Directions

Details Successive Solar Eruptions Triggered by the Collision of Two Small Sunspots with Opposite Polarities and Motional Directions Successive Solar Eruptions Triggered by the Collision of Two Small Sunspots with Opposite Polarities and Motional Directions

Mar 2012

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aj....143...56y&link_type=abstract

The Astronomical Journal, Volume 143, Issue 3, article id. 56 (2012).

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Sun: Activity, Sun: Coronal Mass Ejections: Cmes, Sun: Flares, Sun: Surface Magnetism, Sunspots

Scientific paper

We present a study of the two successive M-class flares associated with two coronal mass ejections (CMEs) triggered by the collision of two small sunspots with opposite magnetic polarities and motional directions in NOAA active region (AR) 10484 on 2003 October 22. From the evolution of this AR in the TRACE white-light images and 96 minute line-of-sight magnetograms observed by the Michelson Doppler Imager on board SOHO, a large sunspot and a small sunspot with negative polarity rotated clockwise about 33° and 18°, respectively, from the northeast of a quiescent sunspot with negative polarity to the southeast from 15:00 UT on October 21 to 16:24 UT on October 23. During the process of their motion, the small sunspot with negative polarity collided with the small sunspot with positive polarity and opposite motional direction. In the collision, this AR produced two successive M-class flares and CMEs according to the observations of GOES and the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph. By analyzing the magnetic fields at polarity inversion lines (PILs) between the two small sunspot, it is found that a sudden squeeze occurred near the onset of the two M-class flares and then recovered itself after the flares. We ruled out the emergence of the magnetic fields near the PIL. According to the brightenings in TRACE 1600 Å and the hard X-ray sources of the RHESSI of two M-class flares, we found that the locations of the two flares are almost situated in the same location at the PIL between the two small sunspots. We suggest that the sudden squeeze between the opposite magnetic polarities is caused by the pressure of the collision of the two small sunspots and resulted in the magnetic reconnection. These results could contribute to understanding the mechanism of flares and CMEs.

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