Tracking of TRACE ultraviolet flare footpoints

Solar flares produce bright, compact sources of UV emission in the lower atmosphere, identified as flare footpoints. Observed at high time cadence with the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer, groups of UV footpoints define flare 'ribbons' which move as the flare progresses. We have developed a procedure to track individual bright kernels within flare ribbons, enabling us to study the motion of these sites of excitation through the solar chromosphere. We have applied this to a flare observed by TRACE in the 1600 Angstrom passband at 2-s cadence. In this event, the footpoints have an average speed of 15 km s(-1), with a superposed random 'meandering' component, consistent with the footpoint magnetic field being anchored around the edges of granular cells. Examining the brightness as a function of time, we find that the timing of peaks in brightness is significantly correlated with the timing of peaks in the product of the footpoint speed with the line-of-sight magnetic field strength at the footpoint location; in other words with a measure of the coronal reconnection rate.