New Vacuum Solar Telescope observations of a flux rope tracked by a filament activation

Abstract

One main goal of the New Vacuum Solar Telescope (NVST) which is located at the \emph{Fuxian Solar Observatory} is to image the Sun at high resolution. Based on the high spatial and temporal resolution NVST H$\alpha$ data and combined with the simultaneous observations from the \emph{Solar Dynamics Observatory} for the first time, we investigate a flux rope tracked by a filament activation. The filament material is initially located at one end of the flux rope and fills in a section of the rope, and then the filament is activated due to magnetic field cancellation. The activated filament rises and flows along helical threads, tracking out the twisted flux rope structure. The length of the flux rope is about 75 Mm, the average width of its individual threads is 1.11 Mm, and the estimated twist is 1$\pi$. The flux rope appears as a dark structure in H$\alpha$ images, a partial dark and partial bright structure in 304 {\AA}, while as bright structures in 171 {\AA} and 131 {\AA} images. During this process, the overlying coronal loops are quite steady since the filament is confined within the flux rope and does not erupt successfully. It seems that, for the event in this study, the filament is located and confined within the flux rope threads, instead of being suspended in the dips of twisted magnetic flux.