File:Three X-Flares in 24 Hours, May 13 - 14, 2013 -Hinode XRT-.webm

Wow! The active region that just rotated over the east limb (11748) has already produced four x-flares. The first three of these, which all occurred within 24 hours of each other, are shown here. The four flares registered as X1.7, X2.8, X3.2, and X1.2 on the GOES scale, which is based on the X-Ray flux observed by the GOES satellite. The images on the left were taken with XRT's thick aluminum filter, which is sensitive to material around 15 million kelvin. This allows us to peer into the flare's core and see things like the fascinating brightening exhibited in the second flare, beneath the main flare arch. The observations on the right were taken with a thinner filter that sees much cooler plasma around 1 Million kelvin. We overexpose these images to reveal fainter stuctures outside the core, like the CME that can be seen lifting off at the onset of observations for the second flare.

Visit our main page (link below) for individual GIFs of each events and for a downloadable movie with somewhat better image quality than seen here.

Visit us at http://xrt.cfa.harvard.edu/ and view the original post at http://xrt.cfa.harvard.edu/xpow/20130515.html

Questions and comments welcome at xrtpow "at" gmail "dot" com