Kazunari Shibata, Kyoto+Hinode/SOT team
Kwasan and Hida Observatories, University of Kyoto, Japan
The heating of the solar chromosphere and corona as well as the acceleration of high speed solar wind is a long-standing puzzle in solar physics. Hinode observations show the ubiquitous presence of chromospheric anemone jets outside sunspots in active regions. They are typically 2000 to 5000 km long and 150 to 300 km wide, and their velocity is 10 to 20 km/s. These small jets have an inverted Y-shape, similar to the shape of X-ray anemone jets observed in the corona. These features imply that magnetic reconnection similar to that in the corona is occurring at a much smaller spatial scale throughout the chromosphere. It is also interesting to note that there is evidence of ubiquitous Alfven waves associated with jets, suggesting that Alfven waves may be generated by magnetic reconnection. Altogether, recent Hinode observations seem to suggest that the heating of the solar chromosphere and corona as well as the acceleration of solar wind may be related to small-scale ubiquitous reconnection as originally conjectured by Parker.