Abstract
Prominences are intriguing, but poorly understood, magnetic structures of the solar corona. The dynamics of solar prominences has been the subject of a large number of studies, and of particular interest is the study of prominence oscillations. Ground- and space-based observations have confirmed the presence of oscillatory motions in prominences and they have been interpreted in terms of magnetohydrodynamic waves. This interpretation opens the door to perform prominence seismology, whose main aim is to determine physical parameters in magnetic and plasma structures (prominences) that are difficult to measure by direct means. Here, we review the observational information gathered about prominence oscillations as well as the theoretical models developed to interpret small and large amplitude oscillations and their temporal and spatial attenuation. Finally, several prominence seismology applications are presented.
Highlights
Quiescent solar filaments are clouds of cool and dense plasma suspended against gravity by forces thought to be of magnetic origin
In some cases, during the course of the oscillations, the filament becomes visible in the Hα image when the prominence is at rest, but when its line-of-sight velocity is sufficiently large, the emission from the material falls outside the bandpass of the filter and the prominence becomes invisible in Hα
The oscillatory periods were different for different threads, which suggested that the physical properties of the different threads were different, with periods varying between 44, 54 and 67 min, velocity amplitudes of the order of 40, 60 and 30 km s−1, while the oscillations of the different threads were in phase they did not show significant damping
Summary
Quiescent solar filaments are clouds of cool and dense plasma suspended against gravity by forces thought to be of magnetic origin. They form along the inversion polarity line in or between the weak remnants of active regions. Observations already suggested that their fine structure is apparently composed by many horizontal and thin dark threads (Jager 1959; Kuperus and Tandberg-Hanssen 1967). More recent high-resolution Hα observations obtained with the Swedish Solar Telescope (SST) in La Palma (Lin et al 2005) and the Dutch Open Telescope (DOT) in Tenerife (Heinzel and Anzer 2006) have allowed to observe this fine structure with much greater detail (see Lin 2011, for a review). The measured average width of resolved thin threads is about 0.3 (∼ 210 km), while their length is between 5 and 40 (∼ 3500–28,000 km)
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