191 research outputs found
A Tale Of Two Spicules: The Impact of Spicules on the Magnetic Chromosphere
We use high-resolution observations of the Sun in Ca II H 3968 A from the
Solar Optical Telescope on Hinode to show that there are at least two types of
spicules that dominate the structure of the magnetic solar chromosphere. Both
types are tied to the relentless magnetoconvective driving in the photosphere,
but have very different dynamic properties. ``Type-I'' spicules are driven by
shock waves that form when global oscillations and convective flows leak into
the upper atmosphere along magnetic field lines on 3-7 minute timescales.
``Type-II'' spicules are much more dynamic: they form rapidly (in ~10s), are
very thin (<200km wide), have lifetimes of 10-150s (at any one height) and seem
to be rapidly heated to (at least) transition region temperatures, sending
material through the chromosphere at speeds of order 50-150 km/s. The
properties of Type II spicules suggest a formation process that is a
consequence of magnetic reconnection, typically in the vicinity of magnetic
flux concentrations in plage and network. Both types of spicules are observed
to carry Alfven waves with significant amplitudes of order 20 km/s.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for Hinode special issue of PAS
The Quiet-Sun Photosphere and Chromosphere
The overall structure and the fine structure of the solar photosphere outside
active regions are largely understood, except possibly important roles of a
turbulent near-surface dynamo at its bottom, internal gravity waves at its top,
and small-scale vorticity. Classical 1D static radiation-escape modelling has
been replaced by 3D time-dependent MHD simulations that come closer to reality.
The solar chromosphere, in contrast, remains ill-understood although its
pivotal role in coronal mass and energy loading makes it a principal research
area. Its fine structure defines its overall structure, so that hard-to-observe
and hard-to-model small-scale dynamical processes are the key to understanding.
However, both chromospheric observation and chromospheric simulation presently
mature towards the required sophistication. The open-field features seem of
greater interest than the easier-to-see closed-field features.Comment: Accepted for special issue "Astrophysical Processes on the Sun" of
Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. A, ed. C. Parnell. Note: clicking on the year in a
citation opens the corresponding ADS abstract page in the browse
Prevalence of Small-scale Jets from the Networks of the Solar Transition Region and Chromosphere
As the interface between the Sun's photosphere and corona, the chromosphere
and transition region play a key role in the formation and acceleration of the
solar wind. Observations from the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph reveal
the prevalence of intermittent small-scale jets with speeds of 80-250 km/s from
the narrow bright network lanes of this interface region. These jets have
lifetimes of 20-80 seconds and widths of 300 km or less. They originate from
small-scale bright regions, often preceded by footpoint brightenings and
accompanied by transverse waves with ~20 km/s amplitudes. Many jets reach
temperatures of at least ~100000 K and constitute an important element of the
transition region structures. They are likely an intermittent but persistent
source of mass and energy for the solar wind.Comment: Figs 1-4 & S1-S5; Movies S1-S8; published in Science, including the
main text and supplementary materials. Reference: H. Tian, E. E. DeLuca, S.
R. Cranmer, et al., Science 346, 1255711 (2014
Magnetic field diagnostics and spatio-temporal variability of the solar transition region
Magnetic field diagnostics of the transition region from the chromosphere to
the corona faces us with the problem that one has to apply extreme UV
spectro-polarimetry. While for coronal diagnostic techniques already exist
through infrared coronagraphy above the limb and radio observations on the
disk, for the transition region one has to investigate extreme UV observations.
However, so far the success of such observations has been limited, but there
are various projects to get spectro-polarimetric data in the extreme UV in the
near future. Therefore it is timely to study the polarimetric signals we can
expect for such observations through realistic forward modeling.
We employ a 3D MHD forward model of the solar corona and synthesize the
Stokes I and Stokes V profiles of C IV 1548 A. A signal well above 0.001 in
Stokes V can be expected, even when integrating for several minutes in order to
reach the required signal-to-noise ratio, despite the fact that the intensity
in the model is rapidly changing (just as in observations). Often this
variability of the intensity is used as an argument against transition region
magnetic diagnostics which requires exposure times of minutes. However, the
magnetic field is evolving much slower than the intensity, and thus when
integrating in time the degree of (circular) polarization remains rather
constant. Our study shows the feasibility to measure the transition region
magnetic field, if a polarimetric accuracy on the order of 0.001 can be
reached, which we can expect from planned instrumentation.Comment: Accepted for publication in Solar Physics (4.Mar.2013), 19 pages, 9
figure
The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS)
The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) small explorer spacecraft
provides simultaneous spectra and images of the photosphere, chromosphere,
transition region, and corona with 0.33-0.4 arcsec spatial resolution, 2 s
temporal resolution and 1 km/s velocity resolution over a field-of-view of up
to 175 arcsec x 175 arcsec. IRIS was launched into a Sun-synchronous orbit on
27 June 2013 using a Pegasus-XL rocket and consists of a 19-cm UV telescope
that feeds a slit-based dual-bandpass imaging spectrograph. IRIS obtains
spectra in passbands from 1332-1358, 1389-1407 and 2783-2834 Angstrom including
bright spectral lines formed in the chromosphere (Mg II h 2803 Angstrom and Mg
II k 2796 Angstrom) and transition region (C II 1334/1335 Angstrom and Si IV
1394/1403 Angstrom). Slit-jaw images in four different passbands (C II 1330, Si
IV 1400, Mg II k 2796 and Mg II wing 2830 Angstrom) can be taken simultaneously
with spectral rasters that sample regions up to 130 arcsec x 175 arcsec at a
variety of spatial samplings (from 0.33 arcsec and up). IRIS is sensitive to
emission from plasma at temperatures between 5000 K and 10 MK and will advance
our understanding of the flow of mass and energy through an interface region,
formed by the chromosphere and transition region, between the photosphere and
corona. This highly structured and dynamic region not only acts as the conduit
of all mass and energy feeding into the corona and solar wind, it also requires
an order of magnitude more energy to heat than the corona and solar wind
combined. The IRIS investigation includes a strong numerical modeling component
based on advanced radiative-MHD codes to facilitate interpretation of
observations of this complex region. Approximately eight Gbytes of data (after
compression) are acquired by IRIS each day and made available for unrestricted
use within a few days of the observation.Comment: 53 pages, 15 figure
Radiative transfer with scattering for domain-decomposed 3D MHD simulations of cool stellar atmospheres
We present the implementation of a radiative transfer solver with coherent
scattering in the new BIFROST code for radiative magneto-hydrodynamical (MHD)
simulations of stellar surface convection. The code is fully parallelized using
MPI domain decomposition, which allows for large grid sizes and improved
resolution of hydrodynamical structures. We apply the code to simulate the
surface granulation in a solar-type star, ignoring magnetic fields, and
investigate the importance of coherent scattering for the atmospheric
structure. A scattering term is added to the radiative transfer equation,
requiring an iterative computation of the radiation field. We use a
short-characteristics-based Gauss-Seidel acceleration scheme to compute
radiative flux divergences for the energy equation. The effects of coherent
scattering are tested by comparing the temperature stratification of three 3D
time-dependent hydrodynamical atmosphere models of a solar-type star: without
scattering, with continuum scattering only, and with both continuum and line
scattering. We show that continuum scattering does not have a significant
impact on the photospheric temperature structure for a star like the Sun.
Including scattering in line-blanketing, however, leads to a decrease of
temperatures by about 350\,K below log tau < -4. The effect is opposite to that
of 1D hydrostatic models in radiative equilibrium, where scattering reduces the
cooling effect of strong LTE lines in the higher layers of the photosphere.
Coherent line scattering also changes the temperature distribution in the high
atmosphere, where we observe stronger fluctuations compared to a treatment of
lines as true absorbers.Comment: A&A, in pres
Analysis of stellar spectra with 3D and NLTE models
Models of radiation transport in stellar atmospheres are the hinge of modern
astrophysics. Our knowledge of stars, stellar populations, and galaxies is only
as good as the theoretical models, which are used for the interpretation of
their observed spectra, photometric magnitudes, and spectral energy
distributions. I describe recent advances in the field of stellar atmosphere
modelling for late-type stars. Various aspects of radiation transport with 1D
hydrostatic, LTE, NLTE, and 3D radiative-hydrodynamical models are briefly
reviewed.Comment: 21 pages, accepted for publication as a chapter in "Determination of
Atmospheric Parameters of B, A, F and G Type Stars", Springer (2014), eds. E.
Niemczura, B. Smalley, W. Pyc
Relation between photospheric magnetic field and chromospheric emission
We simultaneously observed the Stokes parameters of the photospheric iron
line pair at 630.2 nm and the intensity profile of the chromospheric Ca II H
line at 396.8 nm in a quiet Sun region at a heliocentric angle of 53 deg. We
perform a statistical analysis of network and inter-network properties.The
H-index is the integrated emission in a 0.1 nm band around the Ca core. We
separate a non-magnetically, H_non, and a magnetically, H_mag, heated component
from a non-heated component, H_co in the H-index. The average network and
inter-network H-indices are equal to 12 and 10 pm, respectively. The emission
in the network is correlated with the magnetic flux density, approaching a
value of H 10 pm for vanishing flux. The inter-network magnetic field is
dominated by weak field strengths with values down to 200 G and its mean
absolute flux density is 11 Mx cm. We find that a dominant fraction of
the calcium emission caused by the heated atmosphere in the magnetic network,
has non-magnetic origin (H_mag = 2pm, H_non = 3pm). Considering the effect of
straylight, the contribution from an atmosphere with no temperature rise to the
H-index (H_co = 6pm) is about half of the observed H-index in the
inter-network. The H-index in the inter-network is not correlated to any
property of the photospheric magnetic field, suggesting that magnetic flux
concentrations have a negligible role in the chromospheric heating in this
region. The height range of the thermal coupling between the photosphere and
low/mid chromosphere increases in presence of magnetic field. In addition, we
demonstrate that a poor signal-to-noise level in the Stokes profiles leads to a
significant over-estimation of the magnetic field strength.Comment: 15 pages, accepted in Astron. Astrophys., 200
Multiwavelength studies of MHD waves in the solar chromosphere: An overview of recent results
The chromosphere is a thin layer of the solar atmosphere that bridges the
relatively cool photosphere and the intensely heated transition region and
corona. Compressible and incompressible waves propagating through the
chromosphere can supply significant amounts of energy to the interface region
and corona. In recent years an abundance of high-resolution observations from
state-of-the-art facilities have provided new and exciting ways of
disentangling the characteristics of oscillatory phenomena propagating through
the dynamic chromosphere. Coupled with rapid advancements in
magnetohydrodynamic wave theory, we are now in an ideal position to thoroughly
investigate the role waves play in supplying energy to sustain chromospheric
and coronal heating. Here, we review the recent progress made in
characterising, categorising and interpreting oscillations manifesting in the
solar chromosphere, with an impetus placed on their intrinsic energetics.Comment: 48 pages, 25 figures, accepted into Space Science Review
Physodes and the phenolic compounds of brown algae. Composition and significance of physodes in vivo
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