The Sun 21-3-09 - Plasmoid Sphere and Prom Animation

Some nice sizeable prom groups in the west today. The largest in the NW consisted of a high curtain of plasma and I put together a longer animation of the activity. I have the frame alignment procedure sorted now and just need to grab a consistent set of images next time using the same gamma/gain settings so that I don't get the flickering brightness changes. This animation suffers from poor seeing but I thought I would post it up so you can see the amazing leaping tadpole! Watch the upper left surface. The tadpole seems to be triggered by the foot of the uppermost prom re-connecting with the surface - not sure what this activity represents in real terms, but on reading up I discovered that this is probably what is called a plasmoid - ie. a globule of hot plasma. It travels faster than the plasma in the main loops and has a self contained magnetic field. 13 Frames between 10.52 and 12.20 UT - processed in Jasc Animation Shop 3.