Wednesday

The recent discovery of nanojets (Antolin et al., 2021) were reported in a loop-like coronal structure, characterised in part by small and rapid bursts of plasma ejected perpendicular to the field line of origin and accompanied by nanoflare-like intensity bursts in the UV and EUV. These nanojets were interpreted as a product of magnetic reconnection from small misalignments between the braided field lines, thus allowing to clearly identify the reconnection-driven nanoflare, and more generally, distinguish reconnection-driven coronal heating from wave-based coronal heating. The reconnection driver was found to be the partial loss of equilibrium of a nearby prominence but it was speculated that the nanojet should be largely independent from it. Due to their small scale (500 km in widths, 1500 km in lengths on average) and short timescales (less than 15s), it is unclear how pervasive this phenomenon is. In this talk, we present new IRIS and SDO observations of nanojets found in multiple structures, namely in a solar blowout jet and in coronal loops with coronal rain, occurring in different circumstances from the previous discovery. In parallel with the previous findings, we observe that they are mostly ejected perpendicularly to their field line of origin at velocities of 150-250 km/s. They occur following reconnection events, identified by the splitting of the field line origin. In multiple circumstances, we also observe that they occur in clusters, less than 1000km apart and at very similar times. While in the blowout jet case the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability is identified as the reconnection driver, the other 2 cases have a yet unclear origin. These observations of nanojets in a variety of structures and environments suggest that nanojets are a general result of reconnection, and therefore, they may play an important role in the coronal heating contribution.