AAS 204th Meeting, June 2004
Session 2 When the Sun Went Wild
SPD Topical Related Poster, Monday, May 31, 2004, 9:20am-6:30pm, Ballroom

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[2.02] RHESSI Gamma-ray Imaging of the Flares of October/November 2003

G. J. Hurford, S. Krucker (Space Sciences Lab, Univerity of California, Berkeley), R. P. Lin (Space Sciences Lab and Physics Dept., Univerity of California, Berkeley), R. A. Schwartz (Science Systems and Applications, NASA/GSFC), G. H. Share (Naval Research Lab), D. M. Smith (Physics Dept. and Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, Univerity of California, Santa Cruz)

Imaging of gamma-ray line emission from solar flares provides direct information on the spatial characteristics of accelerated ions near the Sun. To date this has been possible for only one event (July 23, 2002) whose neutron-capture line image at 2.2 MeV implied a significant spatial difference between high energy ions and electrons in acceleration and/or transport.

Observations of the X17, X10 and X8 events on October 28, October 29 and November 2, 2003 by the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) provided a ten-fold increase in the detected nuclear-line photons available for imaging. This paper presents the results of imaging of these flares in the 2.2 MeV neutron capture line, including source size, location and motion estimates and comparisons with simultaneous gamma-ray and x-ray emission in the electron-bremsstrahlung continuum.

This work is supported by NASA contract NAS5-98033.


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