Evidence of Reconnection in Solar Flares

Abstract

The physics of flares on the Sun now becomes ‘an étalon’ for contemporary astrophysics, in particular for gamma and X-ray astronomy. In contrast to flares on other stars and to many analogous phenomena in the Universe, solar flares are accessible to a broad variety of observational methods to see and investigate the magnetic reconnection process in high-temperature strongly-magnetized plasma of the corona as well as in low-temperature weakly-ionized plasma in the photosphere.