From apjletters@letters.as.utexas.edu Fri Mar 16 16:04:28 2007 Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2007 13:40:21 -0500 From: apjletters@letters.as.utexas.edu To: haimin@flare.njit.edu Cc: ApJ-MS21573@mss.uchicago.edu, apjletters@letters.as.utexas.edu Subject: Referee Report for ApjL #21573 Dear Haimin, Your paper, ApJL #21573: Title: Filament Eruption after the Onset of the X1.5 Flare on 2005 September 13 Authors: Haimin Wang, Chang Liu, Ju Jing, and Vasyl Yurchyshyn was sent for review to an expert referee who has returned the comments that are appended below. Unfortunately, the referee does not recommend publication of your paper in its present form. Following the usual ApJ policy, your choices are a) withdraw the paper, b) alter the paper to address the referee's concerns and to submit the revised manuscript for this referee's consideration, or c) to revise the paper and request the judgment of a second referee. 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If you have any difficulty accessing the paper, pleas! e contact apj-help@mss.uchicago.edu for technical assistance. If you have not already done so, kindly include electronic mail addresses with each author's affiliation and postal address. Also, let me take this opportunity to remind you that we estimated your paper to be 3.72 printed journal pages in length. Please keep in mind the Letters limit of 4 printed journal pages for a paper when making the revisions to your manuscript. Regards, Chris Sneden, Letters Editor THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS apjletters@letters.as.utexas.edu *********************Referee's Report************************************* Referee report on ApJL #21573 by Wang, Liu,Jing Yurchyshin In the paper a filament eruption is described using multispectral data (but mainly Halpha -0.6 Angstr.) during an X-class flare in AR 10808. It is stated that the eruption occurs late in the event (after the impulsive phase) and the observations are classified as a case of sympathetic flaring. However, I do not see that the paper contains in its present version substantive new results. A lot of observations are presented with insufficient discussion - not all of them are really prepared convincing enough for publication (I will give details below). There is a contrast between a not very well defined aim of the work, some claims which are not really clearly derived from the data, and a somewhat confusing discussion. This results in the impression that the authors did not really work out and finish what they intended but had the need to make a fast paper. I can not recommend the publication of this manuscript and see no need for a fast publication of a Letter version.. Some points which explain my opinion in detail. Possibly they can help the authors to improve the manuscript. My major objection is related with Sections 2/3: For the claim of the paper - a "late" filament eruption - a clear time line of events is very important. Just this is missing in that paper. The authors write that the X-flare peaked at 19:20 (p. 2). On page 3 they write the initiation of the flare occured at 19:22. Some lines later they write that the impulsive phase is peaked at 19:27. Next, they speak about an early phase of the flare at about 19:20. Refering to Fig. 2 (showing data of 19:19 and 19:22) the authors state (all within some lines) that the flare evolves within 2 min rapidly to the main phase. The main phase is, per definition, after the impulsive phase, which should peak at 19:27. So, what should the poor reader believe?? This problem nicely shows the high degree of confusion in the manuscript. I have the same feeling in reading Section 4, unfortunatly (but necessarily, given the confusion in data description). I can not understand why the authors, having the GOES X-ray data, and the 10 GHz Owens Valley flux data - more of the radio information is, unfortunately, not used in the work, and even that not exaustive, only almost uncommented in Figs. 3 and 5 - do not show a flux over time record and bring all their claims in some order with respect to such a curve. Minor problems: 1. I am surprised that it is possible to work about filament activation with Halpha-0.6 Angstr., only. This has to be explained, normally line center and both wings are really necessary. 2. I do not see the loop connections in the selected isoline level presentation of the RHESSI data. It can be as claimed, but it can also be different. 3. I do not see in the given paper any clear observational argument for the claimed loop connections. A hint on a future paper is insufficient (p. 4). In this context, also Fig. 4 is bad - it can be overplotted as a map on the corresponding Halpha images (so the authors would win space for a clear discussion of the data). Without any coordinates in Fig. 4 the reader is helpless and can not see what the authors intend to say. 4. Fig. 5 is mentioned with 2 sentences (p. 6), embedded in speculations about unclear loop connections. Main question: is the magnetograph really well operating under flare conditions?? 5. The introduction is limited to a very narrow view on the literature. Filament eruptions and remote brightenings are a long-standing point of interest, long before the Wang et al. papers (2002 ff). In the present paper it turns out that the discussed event is a sigmoid flare (S-shaped neutral line, mentioned not explicitely in Sect. 3 but seems to be visible in the magnetogram and the Halpha data), and several flare ribbon motions are shown in Fig. 3. No reference to the sigmoid flare literature , no reference to other work where the flare process is analyzed by the kinematics of flare ribbons. 6. I disagree with the sentence which suggests that there is a unique time sequence of events (p. 2): filament, flaring, and then a CME. This can be true in some cases but is never a general rule - even only because of the fact that the early identification of a CME is difficult, but also because of evident vice versa cases: CME, flare with filament destabilization.