Transient phenomena and thermal evolution during the Boss' Day flare of 2010 October 16 with AIA, EVE and RHESSI

On 2010 October 16th, Boss' Day, SDO/AIA observed an M1.6 flare, its first flare using automatic exposure control. This flare also exhibited a number of interesting features, including a faint wavefront, visible in the 171 A and 193 A channels of AIA with an estimated speed of ~700-900 km/s, a CME with a much lower velocity of ~300 km/s, a large plasma ribbon ignited by the flare, late-phase post-flare loops situated away from the main flare kernel, and lastly a vertically polarised kink mode excited far from the flare kernel which was subject to a recent coronal seismological study by Aschwanden & Schrijver (2011). We present an investigation of a number of these features. We find that the wavefront observed in AIA is most likely a signature of the CME observed at later times with LASCO, thus indicating that the CME experiences significant deceleration. A deceleration scenario is also supported by the fact that the observed wavefront velocity, which is only visible some time after the flare, is too slow to be consistent with the timing of the flare eruption. The differential emission measure and energetics of the late-phase post-flare loop are also investigated using coordinated AIA, EVE, and RHESSI observations. We find that the temperature in the late-phase loops is initially modelled well by a single dominant temperature profile in each pixel. However, this model breaks down as the loop cools suggesting a broadening of the differential emission measure as a function of time. This case study illustrates the limitations of single-temperature modelling of the solar corona, but also reveals the diagnostic potential of multi-wavelength AIA studies.