Authors: Holly Gilbert, Lauren Mize, Robert MacQueen, Thomas Holzer
Affiliation: National Center for Atmospheric Research, High Altitude Observatory
Although coronal mass ejections (CMEs) show a strong correlation with erupting prominences, it is presently unclear what role the prominence plays in CME initiation and dynamics. Determining total prominence mass may help develop our understanding of CME dynamics. A first step in obtaining a quantitative measure of total prominence mass is to infer column densities of prominences by measuring the amount of coronal radiation absorbed by prominence material along the line-of-sight in the Fe XII (19.5 nm) spectral line. We introduce a new technique for inferring prominence column densities and thus total prominence mass, which allows us to consider the effects of both foreground and background radiation in our calculations. In the present work we are able to apply our technique for inferring prominence mass under two different observational conditions on the same event, allowing us to compare two different approaches. Our first approach leads to an inferred prominence mass of 1.9 x 1015 g, while our second approach produces a total inferred mass of 3.5 x 1014 g.