Eruption of a solar filament produces a coronal mass ejection, which is a major driver of space weather. Understanding how filaments erupt is thus essential for space weather forecasting.
Both observations and simulations suggest that filament eruption is closely related to magnetic flux emergence. It is thought that eruption is triggered by magnetic reconnection between a filament and an emerging flux. However, details of such a reconnection have rarely been presented.
Recently, a research team led by Dr. LI Leping from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) has revealed the details of reconnection between a filament and its nearby emerging fields, which led to the reconfiguration and subsequent partial eruption of the filament.
The study was published in The Astrophysical Journal on Aug. 18.
In the active region NOAA 12816, a filament was located over the polarity inversion lines on April 21, 2021. Near the northwestern endpoints of the filament, magnetic fields emerged and reconnected with the filament, forming a newly reconnected filament and loops.
