A new variety of coronal mass ejection: Streamer puffs from compact ejective flares

We report on SOHO UVCS, LASCO, EIT, and MDI observations of a series of narrow ejections that occurred at the solar limb. These ejections originated from homologous compact flares whose source was an island of included polarity located just inside the base of a coronal streamer. Some of these ejections result in narrow CMEs ("streamer puffs") that move out along the streamer. These streamer puffs differ from "streamer blowout" CMEs in that ( 1) while the streamer is transiently inflated by the puff, it is not disrupted, and ( 2) each puff comes from a compact explosion in the outskirts of the streamer arcade, not from an extensive eruption along the main neutral line of the streamer arcade. From the observations, we infer that each streamer puff is produced by means of the inflation or blowing open of an outer loop of the arcade by ejecta from the compact-flare explosion in the foot of the loop. So, in terms of their production, our streamer puffs are a new variety of CME.