The hard solar X-ray burst of 18 September 1963

A hard solar X-ray burst was observed by J-P. Legrand on 18 September 1963, 13:56 UT, at balloon altitude. It lasted a few minutes; a steep increase was followed by an exponential decay. During its declining phase a weak radio burst was observed on 3 and 10 cm, not on longer wavelengths.Maximum radio intensity occurred two minutes after that of the X-ray burst. The X-ray and radio bursts ended almost simultaneously. Optically a small shortlived (some minutes) flare point occurred simultaneously with the X-ray burst in a magnetically interesting part of the active region of September 1963. The X-burst photons seem to have had an energy of about 0.5 MeV. The burst was therefore of a fairly rare type, since very few other bursts with similar photon energies have been detected up to now.It is suggested that a mass of gas, magnetically confined to a volume of about 5·10²⁵ cm³ in the low corona, containing about 3·10³⁵ electrons was accelerated to energies of about 0.5 MeV. The gas gradually expanded, partly also to higher levels. The gyro-synchrotron radiation, emitted by the plasma became observable after about two minutes. At the lower radio frequencies the radiation was absorbed by overlying undisturbed coronal matter. Quantitative computations justify this model. A detailed summary of the events, and some numerical data are given in the concluding Section 8 and in Table V.