Dynamical fine structure of a quiescent filament

A quiescent filament was observed near the center of the disk (N5, W5) with the MSDP spectrograph of the 50 cm refractor of the Pic-du-Midi Observatory on June 17, 1986. We focus our study on the statistical moments of the Dopplershift,V ₁, and the intensity,I ₁, at the center of a chord of the Hα profile (±0.256 Å), versus the minimum intensityI ₀. We use a statistical model simulating a numbern _max of threads (of optical thicknessτ ₀ and source functionS ₀), seen over the chromosphere. The threadsj along the same line-of-sighti are identical except for the velocityv _j (gaussian distributionv ₀,σ _v). We search for the best fit between the observed and simulated quantities:V ₁,σ (V ₁),I ₁,σ(I ₁), and the histogram of theI ₀ values over the field of view. A good fit is obtained with: (a) threads characterized byτ ₀ = 0.2,S ₀ = 0.06 (unit of the continuum at disk center), mean upward velocityv ₀ = 1.7 km s⁻¹ and gaussian-type velocity distributionσ _v = 3.5 km s⁻¹. Other possible values ofτ ₀ andσ _v are discussed; (b) underlying chromosphere deduced from observed quiet Sun (outside the filament) by modifying the chromospheric velocities: additional mean upward velocity 0.7 km s⁻¹, standard deviation reduced by a factorF _c ∼ 0.7. The results are discussed in connection with the values deduced from prominence observations.