High-resolution Observations of a White-light Flare with NST

Abstract

Using high-resolution data from the New Solar Telescope, we studied fine spatial and temporal details of an M1.3 white-light (WL) flare, which was one of three homologous solar flares (C6.8, M1.3, and M2.3) observed in close proximity to the west solar limb on 2014 October 29 in NOAA active region 12192. We report that the TiO WL flare consists of compact and intense cores surrounded by less intense spatial halos. The strong and compact WL cores were measured to be Mm across, with an area of about 10 14 cm 2 . Several TiO features were not cospatial with H α flare ribbons and were displaced toward the disk center by about 500 km, which suggests that the TiO and H α radiation probably did not originate in the same chromospheric volume. The observed TiO intensity enhancements are not normally distributed and are structured by the magnetic field of the penumbra.