The magnetic field of solar prominences

In his famous monographs, Einar Tandberg-Hanssen writes that "the single, physically most important parameter to study in prominences may be the magnetic field. Shapes, motions, and in fact the very existence of prominences depend on the nature of the magnetic field threading the prominence plasma". Hereafter we sumarize recent contributions and advances in our knowledge about the magnetic field of solar prominences. It mostly relies on high resolution and high sensitivity spectropolarimetry made both in the visible and in the near infrared.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, Procs. of the 2008 meeting of the French Society of Astronomy and Astrophysics (SF2A

2D radiative modelling of He I spectral lines formed in solar prominences

We present preliminary results of 2D radiative modelling of He I lines in solar prominences, using a new numerical code developed by us (Leger, Chevallier and Paletou 2007). It treats self-consistently the radiation transfer and the non-LTE statistical equilibrium of H and, in a second stage, the one of He using a detailed atomic model. Preliminary comparisons with new visible plus near-infrared observations made at high spectral resolution with THeMIS are very satisfactory.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures (to appear in the Procs. of Solar Polarization Workshop #5, eds. Berdyugina, Nagendra and Ramelli), revised +2 citations, better figure

Freeware solutions for spectropolarimetric data reduction

Most of the solar physicists use very expensive software for data reduction and visualization. We present hereafter a reliable freeware solution based on the Python language. This is made possible by the association of the latter with a small set of additional libraries developed in the scientific community. It provides then a very powerful and economical alternative to other interactive data languages. Although it can also be used for any kind of post-processing of data, we demonstrate the capabities of such a set of freeware tools using THeMIS observations of the second solar spectrum.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures (to appear in the Procs. of Solar Polarization Workshop #5, eds. Berdyugina, Nagendra and Ramelli

Inversion of stellar fundamental parameters from Espadons and Narval high-resolution spectra

The general context of this study is the inversion of stellar fundamental parameters from high-resolution Echelle spectra. We aim indeed at developing a fast and reliable tool for the post-processing of spectra produced by Espadons and Narval spectropolarimeters. Our inversion tool relies on principal component analysis. It allows reduction of dimensionality and the definition of a specific metric for the search of nearest neighbours between an observed spectrum and a set of observed spectra taken from the Elodie stellar library. Effective temperature, surface gravity, total metallicity and projected rotational velocity are derived. Various tests presented in this study, and done from the sole information coming from a spectral band centered around the Mg I b-triplet and with spectra from FGK stars are very promising.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures (accepted A&A). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1401.108

Numerical radiative transfer with state-of-the-art iterative methods made easy

This article presents an on-line tool (rttools.irap.omp.eu) and its accompanying software ressources for the numerical solution of basic radiation transfer out of local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE). State-of-the-art stationary iterative methods such as Accelerated $\Lambda$-Iteration and Gauss-Seidel schemes, using a short characteristics-based formal solver are used. We also comment on typical numerical experiments associated to the basic non-LTE radiation problem. These ressources are intended for the largest use and benefit, in support to more classical radiation transfer lectures usually given at the Master level.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for Eur. J. Phys. - see also (and use!) http://rttools.irap.omp.e

Principal component analysis-based inversion of effective temperatures for late-type stars

We show how the range of application of the principal component analysis-based inversion method of Paletou et al. (2015) can be extended to late-type stars data. Besides being an extension of its original application domain, for FGK stars, we also used synthetic spectra for our learning database. We discuss our results on effective temperatures against previous evaluations made available from Vizier and Simbad services at CDS.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&