Apparent Solar Tornado - Like Prominences
Olga Panasenco, Sara F. Martin, Marco Velli

TL;DR
High-resolution solar observations show that tornado-like prominences are illusions caused by projection effects and plasma motions, not true vortical structures, clarifying their nature and relation to magnetic fields and photospheric vortices.
Contribution
This study clarifies that solar tornado-like prominences are illusions due to projection effects and plasma motions, not actual vortices, based on high-resolution SDO data.
Findings
Tornado appearances are due to projection effects and plasma motions.
Apparent vortical motions arise from counterstreaming and oscillations.
No evidence of true vortical motion in tornado prominences.
Abstract
Recent high-resolution observations from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) have reawakened interest in the old and fascinating phenomenon of solar tornado-like prominences. This class of prominences was first introduced by Pettit (1932), who studied them over many years. Observations of tornado prominences similar to the ones seen by SDO had already been documented by Secchi (1877) in his famous "Le Soleil". High resolution and high cadence multiwavelength data obtained by SDO reveal that the tornado-like appearance of these prominences is mainly an illusion due to projection effects. We discuss two different cases where prominences on the limb might appear to have a tornado-like behavior. One case of apparent vortical motions in prominence spines and barbs arises from the (mostly) 2D counterstreaming plasma motion along the prominence spine and barbs together with oscillations along…
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