Paper detail

The surge-like eruption of a miniature filament

We report on the rare eruption of a miniature H_alpha filament that took a surge form. The filament first underwent a full development within 46 minutes and then began to erupt 9 minutes later, followed by a compact, impulsive X-ray class M2.2 flare with a two ribbon nature only at the early eruption phase. During the eruption, its top rose, whereas the two legs remained rooted in the chromosphere and swelled little perpendicular to the rising direction. This led to a surge-like eruption with a narrow angular extent. Similar to the recent observations for standard and blowout X-ray jets by Moore et al., we thus define it as a "blowout H_alpha surge". Furthermore, our observations showed that the eruption was associated with (1) a coronal mass ejection guided by a preexisting streamer, (2) abrupt, significant, and persistent changes in the photospheric magnetic field around the filament, and (3) sudden disappearance of a small pore. These observations thus provide evidence that blowout surge is a small-scale version of large-scale filament eruption in many aspects. Our observations further suggest that at least part of H_alpha surges belong to blowout-type ones, and exact distinction between standard and blowout H_alpha surges is important in understanding their different origins and associated eruptive phenomena.