Multiwavelength and Dual-perspective Observations of Eruption and Untwisting of Two Homologous Magnetic Flux Ropes

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we present a detailed morphological, kinematic, and thermal analysis of two homologous magnetic flux ropes (MFRs) from NOAA 11515 on 2012 July 8–9. The study is based on multiwavelength and dual-perspective imaging observations from the Solar Dynamics Observatory and the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory Ahead spacecraft, which can reveal the structure and evolution of the two MFRs. We find that both of the MFRs show up in multiple passbands and their emissions mainly consist of a cold component peaking at a temperature of ∼0.4–0.6 MK and a hot component peaking at ∼7–8 MK. The two MFRs exhibit erupting, expanding, and untwisting motions that manifest distinctive features from two different viewpoints. Their evolution can be divided into two stages—a fast-eruption stage with speeds of about 105–125 km s−1 for MFR-1 and 50–65 km s−1 for MFR-2—and a slow-expansion (or untwisting) stage with speeds of about 10–35 km s−1 for MFR-1 and 10–30 km s−1 for MFR-2 in the plane of the sky. We also find that during the two-stage evolution, the high-temperature features mainly appear in the interface region between MFRs and ambient magnetic structures and also in the center of MFRs, which suggests that some heating processes take place in such places as magnetic reconnection and plasma compression. These observational results indicate that the eruption and untwisting processes of MFRs are coupled with the heating process, among which an energy conversion exists.