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L. Sui (CUA & NASA/GSFC), G. D. Holman (NASA/GSFC), S. Krucker (SSL, UC Berkeley), B. R. Dennis (NASA/GSFC)
The Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) was successfully launched on February 5, 2002. RHESSI is now obtaining high resolution spectra and images of solar flares in x-rays and gamma-rays. In order to interpret these images and spectra, we have been developing flare models incorporating thermal and nonthermal bremsstrahlung emission. In our models electrons with a power-law energy distribution are continuously injected into a flare loop, with Coulomb scattering and magnetic mirroring included. We use the EFLUXPROG Fokker-Planck code ( http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/hessi/modelware.htm ) to obtain the steady-state electron distribution throughout the loop. We then compute the spectral and spatial distribution of the bremsstrahlung hard x-ray flux. We have compared these model results with results obtained by RHESSI during the impulsive phase of several moderate size flare. We will present some of these early RHESSI observations and the comparison with our flare models.
This work is supported in part by the NASA Sun-Earth Connection Program and the RHESSI Project.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34
© 2002. The American Astronomical Soceity.