The SLAC Vertical Comparator for the Calibration of Digital Levels

Digital levels replaced spirit levels in most fields of precise height measurements because of the automation of the height readings. Three manufacturers offer digital levels with a single reading resolution of 10 {micro}m, and for all of them systematic effects are known. In Europe several facilities for system calibration of digital levels using vertical comparators were established within the last decade. However, there still was no system calibration facility in North America. In order to guarantee the accuracy required for the alignment of experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) a calibration facility for the system calibration of digital levels was built. In this paper the setup of the SLAC vertical comparator is described in detail and its standard uncertainty is derived. In order to perform traditional rod calibration of conventional line-scaled rods, a CCD camera was integrated into the SLAC comparator. The CCD camera setup is also briefly described. To demonstrate the capabilities of the comparator, results of system and rod calibration are shown

Structure of the solar photosphere studied from the radiation hydrodynamics code ANTARES

The ANTARES radiation hydrodynamics code is capable of simulating the solar granulation in detail unequaled by direct observation. We introduce a state-of-the-art numerical tool to the solar physics community and demonstrate its applicability to model the solar granulation. The code is based on the weighted essentially non-oscillatory finite volume method and by its implementation of local mesh refinement is also capable of simulating turbulent fluids. While the ANTARES code already provides promising insights into small-scale dynamical processes occurring in the quiet-Sun photosphere, it will soon be capable of modeling the latter in the scope of radiation magnetohydrodynamics. In this first preliminary study we focus on the vertical photospheric stratification by examining a 3-D model photosphere with an evolution time much larger than the dynamical timescales of the solar granulation and of particular large horizontal extent corresponding to 25′′×25′′ on the solar surface to smooth out horizontal spatial inhomogeneities separately for up- and downflows. The highly resolved Cartesian grid thereby covers ∼4 Mm of the upper convection zone and the adjacent photosphere. Correlation analysis, both local and two-point, provides a suitable means to probe the photospheric structure and thereby to identify several layers of characteristic dynamics: The thermal convection zone is found to reach some ten kilometers above the solar surface, while convectively overshooting gas penetrates even higher into the low photosphere. An ≈145 km wide transition layer separates the convective from the oscillatory layers in the higher photosphere.© The Author(s) 201