Polar Aurora on the Sun from December 2006 [Hinode/XRT]

In December of 2006, XRT was tracking AR10930, the only active region visible on the sun. During this time, full disk, thin beryllium images were taken every hour for several days. This filter only sees the hotter coronal plasmas (4-10M Kelvin) so the sun appears mostly dark except around active regions. AR10930 produced several flares (see XRT’s flare catalog) and we expected to see loops brightening all around the active region. But near the end of the movie, bright loops and wisps appear at the south po