The new movie export menu makes it easier to set the exact scaling of the area you are interested in, and the processing itself is now performed on the graphics card using OpenGL:

The SDO Cutout Service plug-in allows you to request science-quality image data from the SDO/AIA and HMI instruments for the region of interest and time range selected in JHelioviewer:

The material travels in to the field of view from its launch location, which can be seen in STEREO-B EUVI images. If you go to STEREO latest image selector and select ‘Behind EUVI 195′, pick a resolution of 512 x 512, type in a start and end date of 20120202, and select ‘Slideshow’, you get an animation of the event as seen from STEREO-B. There is a filament eruption on the upper left of the disk (it is hard to spot) which is the same material seen in the AIA 304 movie above:

and a flare in more or less the same area of the Sun – look for the very bright patch at the limb of the Sun at the upper left of the disk.

Thanks to goggog67 for spotting this event and sharing it with us!

Solar flares are caused by the interaction of particles accelerated by magnetic reconnection with the surrounding plasma. In the movies below, you can see bright loop-top sources filling in their supporting loops. This caused by the flare-accelerated particles striking the surrounding plasma, and heating it up; as that plasma cools down, it appears in the AIA wavebands. This event should be visible in all the other AIA wavebands (which correspond approximately to different temperatures in the solar plasma).

The filament is the large dark straggly line of material in the upper left of the movie. Click here to see the movie in helioviewer.org.

Filaments are cool strands of material about 100 times cooler than the surrounding plasma, and are supported by magnetic fields. They can lie suspended but cool in the hot solar atmosphere for weeks, and then erupt in a matter of minutes, causing coronal mass ejections. It should be rotating into the SDO field of view in the next couple of days. If you are on Facebook, The Sun Today has a great post about this filament. Let’s see what happens!

The filament(1) is the narrow dark moving thread in the middle of the field of view. As the movie progresses the filament evolves and eventually erupts out in to space, causing a coronal mass ejection. The material underneath the filament darkens, indicating an evacuation of plasma, that is, the plasma is draining away from that part of the solar atmosphere. These kinds of events happen a lot, and will happen more as solar activity ramps up. Thank you, muriealdurian, for uploading a good example of a filament eruption.

(1) Prominences are filaments seen over the limb of the Sun – prominences and filaments are the same thing, but have different names for historical reasons. Prominences and filaments were first observed in different wavelengths, and so acquired different names. Later, we realized that they were the same thing, but the two names have stuck around in the literature.

As the event progresses, you can clearly see that the material is spiraling around as it slowly moves away from the Sun’s surface. It may be associated with an ejection seen in LASCO C2, although the data here is as yet incomplete. Other users have also shred movies of the same event: here is one shared by danielchangck:

and another movie shared by papavalium:

If you find something interesting, please let us know by either emailing us at contact@helioviewer.org, or by sharing it on helioviewer.org via YouTube.

Thanks!

It’s a great example of the complex evolution that an active can undergo in a relatively short amount of time. Studying the evolution of active region loops on the limb cuts right through the loops themselves so you don’t see any of the disk emission along your line of sight, and so removes a potential source of confusion.

Right at the very start you can see that loops on the southern side of the active region appear to contract (a CME and a prominence eruption are occuring). As the event progresses, you’ll notice that two dark areas appear in the coronal moss, outlined by some very bright, and small scale emission, which end up as loop footpoints to the subsequent loop brightening that occurs. This event is interesting for the detail it is possible to see in AIA, particularly in the brightening of the loop footpoints before the main bright loop occurs. Thanks to user otraLoly for sharing this video with users of helioviewer.org!

Here are some videos of other events that from earlier this year, starting with a few of the videos from this week’s eruption:

Note: Many of the videos above are from the YouTube channel “Helioviewer”. As of this week we are moving to a new location! If you want to see new videos that we post, subscribe instead to HelioviewerScience.

When you request a movie on Helioviewer.org we attempt to use as many images as are available for the requested time period, within a specified limit. Normally that limit is 300 images. For a single-layer movie this meant that the movie would be created using about 300 images. For multi-layer movies, the number of images allowed is divided by the number of layers included or order to deal with the increased strain. For instance, if you requested a two-layer movie (e.g. AIA 304 and LASCO C2), the limit would go become 300 / 2 = 150 images. Similarly, for a three-layer movie the limit would be 300 / 3 = 100 images. All of this is simply to make it possible to create movies in a reasonable amount of time, within the constraints of the server Helioviewer.org runs on.

In order for us to be able to process the large amount of movie requests waiting to be processed (currently about 3000), we are going to temporarily decrease the maximum movie image limit from 300 to 150. In order to keep the frame-rate high, we will also decrease the default movie duration by a proportionate amount: instead of each movie being 20 seconds long, movies will be 10 seconds long instead. So basically, if you either requested a movie during the past 24 hours, or request one sometime during the next several days, it will likely be half as long, and include half as many images as usual. Once movie demand returns to a more sustainable level and we have caught up with the current queue of movies these limits will be returned to their normal values so users can continue to make the high-quality movies they are used to.

Thanks everyone for your patience.

Update June 09, 2011: We have decreased the image limit (from 150 to 100) and movie duration (from 10s to 6.6s) once more to account for the continued high-demand. Once things slow down a bit we’ll increase the limit first to 150, then back to 300.