Plasmoid Ejection at a Solar Total Eclipse

¹ Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, UMR 7095, CNRS and UPMC, 98 Bis Bd. Arago, 75014 Paris, France
² Royal Observatory of Belgium, SIDC, Brussels, Belgium
³ ESA-Science and Robotic Exploration Directorate, Royal Observatory of Belgium, SIDC, Brussels, Belgium
⁴ Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology, Technická 2, 616 69 Brno, Czech Republic
⁵ Physics Department, Payame Noor University, 19395-3697 Tehran, I, R. of Iran, Iran
⁶ Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
⁷ Pushkov IZMIRAN, Moscow Region, Troitsk, Russia
⁸ Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, UMR 6110, 13331 Marseille, France
⁹ Predictive Science, Inc. San Diego, CA 92121, USA
¹⁰ Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad Católica del Norte, Antofagasta, Chile
¹¹ Royal Observatory of Belgium, SIDC, Brussels, Belgium
¹² FIAN, P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute, Moscow, Russia

Abstract

The existence of coronal plasmoids has been postulated for many years in order to supply material to streamers and possibly to the solar wind (SW). The W-L SoHO C2 Lasco coronagraph observations were made under the 2.2 solar radii (R0) occulting disk to look at the ultimate sources of the SW; EUV imagers are preferably devoted to the analysis of the corona on and very near the solar disk. Here, in addition to eclipse white-light (W-L) snapshots, we used the new SWAP space-borne imager designed for the systematic survey of coronal activity in the EUV lines near 17.4 nm, over a field of view (FOV) up to 2 R0. Using summed and co-aligned images, the corona can then be evaluated for the 1st time up to the limit of this FOV. At the time of the July 11, 2010, solar total eclipse a 20h continuous run of observations was collected, including images taken during eclipse totality from several ground observing locations where W-L data were collected. A plasmoid-like off-limb event was followed using the SWAP summed