• Title/Summary/Keyword: Sun: photosphere

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A Comprehensive View of Three-minute Umbral Oscillations

  • Chae, Jongchul;Cho, Kyuhyoun;Kang, Juhyeong;Kwak, Hannah;Lee, Kyeore
    • The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.44 no.2
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    • pp.40.3-40.3
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    • 2019
  • Our recent observations of the Sun through strong spectral lines have revealed several important properties of the three-minute umbral oscillations inside sunspots -- the oscillations of intensity and Doppler velocity with periods of 2 to 3 minutes. The oscillations usually occur in the form of a time series of oscillation packets each of which lasts 10 to 20 minutes, not as continuous trains. Each oscillation packet is characterized by a singly peaked power spectrum of velocity oscillation. The oscillations propagate in the vertical direction from the photosphere to the corona. In the upper chromosphere, they develop into shocks that eventually collide with the transition region. When shocks propagate along a highly inclined direction, the merging of two successive shocks can take place. Once they enter the corona, they change to linear compressional waves. In the image plane, the three-minute oscillations propagate with high speeds in the transverse direction as well, usually propagating radially outwards from a point, and sometimes accompanying spiraling patterns of Doppler velocity. These observational properties can be theoretically explained by postulating the spatio-temporally localized source of fast MHD waves at a depth of about 2000 km below the surface, the excitation of slow MHD waves via mode conversion near the photosphere, and the resonance of the slow waves in the photospheric layer below the temperature minimum, and the nonlinear development of slow waves in the chromosphere.

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AUTOMATIC DETECTION AND EXTRACTION ALGORITHM OF INTER-GRANULAR BRIGHT POINTS

  • Feng, Song;Ji, Kai-Fan;Deng, Hui;Wang, Feng;Fu, Xiao-Dong
    • Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.45 no.6
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    • pp.167-173
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    • 2012
  • Inter-granular Bright Points (igBPs) are small-scale objects in the Solar photosphere which can be seen within dark inter-granular lanes. We present a new algorithm to automatically detect and extract igBPs. Laplacian and Morphological Dilation (LMD) technique is employed by the algorithm. It involves three basic processing steps: (1) obtaining candidate "seed" regions by Laplacian; (2) determining the boundary and size of igBPs by morphological dilation; (3) discarding brighter granules by a probability criterion. For validating our algorithm, we used the observed samples of the Dutch Open Telescope (DOT), collected on April 12, 2007. They contain 180 high-resolution images, and each has a $85{\times}68\;arcsec^2$ field of view (FOV). Two important results are obtained: first, the identified rate of igBPs reaches 95% and is higher than previous results; second, the diameter distribution is $220{\pm}25km$, which is fully consistent with previously published data. We conclude that the presented algorithm can detect and extract igBPs automatically and effectively.

OBSERVATIONS AND SPECTRAL ANALYSES OF SOLAR FLARES

  • DING M. D.
    • Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.36 no.spc1
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    • pp.49-54
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    • 2003
  • We introduce the two-dimensional spectral observations of solar flares using the Solar Tower Tele-scope of Nanjing University, China. In particular, we introduce three typical events and the methods used to analyze the data. (1) The flare of November 11, 1998, which is a limb flare. We derive the temperature and density within the flaring loop using non-LTE calculations. The results show that the loop top may be hotter and denser than other parts of the loop, which may be a result of magnetic reconnect ion above the loop. (2) The flare of March 10, 2001, which is a white-light flare that shows an emission enhancement at the near infrared continuum. We propose a model of non-thermal electron beam heating plus backwarming to interpret the observations. (3) The flare of September 29, 2002, which shows unusual line asymmetries at one flare kernel. The line asymmetries are caused by an upward moving plasma that is accelerated and heated during the flare development.

MULTI-WAVELENGTH FIBRIL DYNAMICS AND OSCILLATIONS ABOVE SUNSPOT WAVE PROPAGATION

  • MUMPUNI, EMANUEL S.;HERDIWIJAYA, DHANI;DJAMAL, MITRA;DJAMALUDDIN, THOMAS
    • Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.30 no.2
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    • pp.59-60
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    • 2015
  • High resolution, multi-wavelength images from the Dutch Open Telescope were used to study the detailed mechanisms that might be involved in the multiple layer solar atmosphere observed in high cadence multi-wavelength observations. With the exceptional data observed for active region NOAA 10789 on 2005 July 13th, we study the changing pattern of the fibril using multi-wavelength tomography of the $H{\alpha}$ line center and blue wing, Ca II H, and the G Band. It is believed that a long fibril that is rooted in the umbra, with longer apparent periodicity, may be due to morphological changes. To determine this, we conduct phase difference and coherency analysis between points along the fibril to understand how the wave propagates.

The solar photospheric and chromospheric magnetic field as observed in the near-infrared

  • Collados, Manuel
    • The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.41 no.1
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    • pp.31.4-32
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    • 2016
  • Observing the solar atmosphere with ground-based telescopes in the near-infrared has a number of advantages when compared to classical measurements in visible wavelengths. One of them comes from the magnetic sensitivity of spectral lines, which varies as ${\lambda}_g$, where g is the effective $Land{\acute{e}}$ factor of the transition. This wavelength dependence makes the near-infrared range adequate to study subtle spatial or temporal variations of the magnetic field. Spectral lines, such as the photospheric Fe I $1.5648{\mu}m$ spectral line, with a $Land{\acute{e}}$ factor g=3, have often been used in the past for this type of studies. To study the chromosphere, the Ca II IR triplet and the He I $1.0830{\mu}m$ triplet are the most often observed lines. The latter has the additional advantage that the photospheric Si I $1.0827{\mu}m$ is close enough so that photosphere and chromosphere can be simultaneously recorded with a single detector in a spectrograph. The instrument TIP (Tenerife Infrared Polarimeter) has been continuously operating since 1999 at the 70-cm German VTT of the Observatorio del Teide and has been recently moved to the 1.5-m German GREGOR. During all this time, results have been obtained concerning the nature of the weak photospheric magnetic field of the quiet sun, magneto-acoustic wave propagation, evolution with the cycle of sunspot magnetic fields, photospheric and chromospheric magnetic field in emerging regions, magnetic field in chromospheric structures such as filaments, prominences, flares, and spicules, etc. In this talk, I will review the main results obtained after all these observations and mention the main challenges for the future. With its novel polarization-free design and a complete suite of instruments aimed at simultaneous (imaging and spectroscopic) observations of the solar photosphere and chromosphere, the EST (European Solar Telescope) will represent a major world-wide infrastructure to understand the physical nature of all these phenomena.

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Fast Spectral Inversion of the Strong Absorption Lines in the Solar Chromosphere Based on a Deep Learning Model

  • Lee, Kyoung-Sun;Chae, Jongchul;Park, Eunsu;Moon, Yong-Jae;Kwak, Hannah;Cho, Kyuhyun
    • The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.46 no.2
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    • pp.46.3-47
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    • 2021
  • Recently a multilayer spectral inversion (MLSI) model has been proposed to infer the physical parameters of plasmas in the solar chromosphere. The inversion solves a three-layer radiative transfer model using the strong absorption line profiles, H alpha and Ca II 8542 Å, taken by the Fast Imaging Solar Spectrograph (FISS). The model successfully provides the physical plasma parameters, such as source functions, Doppler velocities, and Doppler widths in the layers of the photosphere to the chromosphere. However, it is quite expensive to apply the MLSI to a huge number of line profiles. For example, the calculating time is an hour to several hours depending on the size of the scan raster. We apply deep neural network (DNN) to the inversion code to reduce the cost of calculating the physical parameters. We train the models using pairs of absorption line profiles from FISS and their 13 physical parameters (source functions, Doppler velocities, Doppler widths in the chromosphere, and the pre-determined parameters for the photosphere) calculated from the spectral inversion code for 49 scan rasters (~2,000,000 dataset) including quiet and active regions. We use fully connected dense layers for training the model. In addition, we utilize a skip connection to avoid a problem of vanishing gradients. We evaluate the model by comparing the pairs of absorption line profiles and their inverted physical parameters from other quiet and active regions. Our result shows that the deep learning model successfully reproduces physical parameter maps of a scan raster observation per second within 15% of mean absolute percentage error and the mean squared error of 0.3 to 0.003 depending on the parameters. Taking this advantage of high performance of the deep learning model, we plan to provide the physical parameter maps from the FISS observations to understand the chromospheric plasma conditions in various solar features.

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ASYMMETRY OF MAGNETIC HELICITY FLUX IN EMERGING BIPOLAR ACTIVE REGIONS

  • Yang, Dan;Jiang, Yunchun;Yang, Jiayan;Bi, Yi;Yang, Bo
    • Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.47 no.3
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    • pp.105-113
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    • 2014
  • We apply differential affine velocity estimator (DAVE) to the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)/Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) 12-min line-of-sight magnetograms, and separately calculate the injected magnetic helicity for the leading and the following polarities of nine emerging bipolar active regions (ARs). Comparing magnetic helicity flux of the leading polarity with the following polarity, we find that six ARs studied in this paper have the following polarity that injected more magnetic helicity flux than that of the leading polarity. We also measure the mean area of each polarity in all the nine ARs, and find that the compact polarity tend to possess more magnetic helicity flux than the fragmented one. Our results confirm the previous studies on asymmetry of magnetic helicity that emerging bipolar ARs have a polarity preference in injecting magnetic helicity. Based on the changes of unsigned magnetic flux, we divide the emergence process into two evolutionary stages: (1) an increasing stage before the peak flux and (2) a constant or decreasing stage after the peak flux. Obvious changes on magnetic helicity flux can be seen during transition from one stage to another. Seven ARs have one or both polarity that changed the sign of magnetic helicity flux. Additionally, the prevailing polarity of the two ARs, which injects more magnetic helicity, changes form the following polarity to the leading one.

TEMPORAL CHANGE OF MAGNETIC SHEAR FREE FROM THE 180° AMBIGUITY

  • MOON Y.-J.;WANG HAIMIN;SPIROCK THOMAS J.;PARK Y. D.
    • Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.35 no.3
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    • pp.143-149
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    • 2002
  • In this paper we present a methodology to derive the temporal change of the magnetic shear angle from a series of vector magnetograms, with a high time cadence. This method looks for the minimum change of the shear angle between a pair of magnetograms, free from the $180^{\circ}$ ambiguity, and then accumulates this change over many successive pairs to derive the temporal change of magnetic shear. This methodology will work well if only the successive magnetograms occurred in an active region are well aligned and its helicity sign is reasonably determined. We have applied this methodology to a set of vector magnetograms of NOAA Active Region 9661 on October 19, 2001 by the new digital magnetograph at the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO). For this work we considered well aligned magnetograms whose cross-correlation values are larger than 0.95. As a result, we have confirmed the recent report of Wang et al. that there was the abrupt shear change associated with the X1.6 flare. It is also demonstrated that the shear change map can be an useful tool to highlight the local areas that experienced the abrupt shear change. Finally, we suggest that this observation should be a direct support of the emergence of sheared magnetic fields.

MAXIMUM POWER ENTROPY METHOD FOR LOW CONTRAST IMAGES

  • CHAE JONG-CHUL;YUN HONG SIK
    • Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.27 no.2
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    • pp.191-201
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    • 1994
  • We propose to use the entropy of power spectra defined in the frequency domain for the deconvolution of extended images. Spatial correlations requisite for extended sources may be insured by increasing the role of power entropy because the power is just a representation of spatial correlations in the frequency domain. We have derived a semi-analytical solution which is found to severely reduce computing time compared with other iteration schemes. Even though the solution is very similar to the well-known Wiener filter, the regularizingng term in the new expression is so insensitive to the noise characteristics as to assure a stable solution. Applications have been made to the IRAS $60{\mu}m\;and\;100{\mu}m$ images of the dark cloud B34 and the optical CCD image of a solar active region containing a circular sunspot and a small pore.

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A NEW METHOD TO DETERMINE THE TEMPERATURE OF CMES USING A CORONAGRAPH FILTER SYSTEM

  • CHO, KYUHYOUN;CHAE, JONGCHUL;LIM, EUN-KYUNG;CHO, KYUNG-SUK;BONG, SU-CHAN;YANG, HEESU
    • Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.49 no.1
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    • pp.45-51
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    • 2016
  • The coronagraph is an instrument that enables the investigation of faint features in the vicinity of the Sun, particularly coronal mass ejections (CMEs). So far coronagraphic observations have been mainly used to determine the geometric and kinematic parameters of CMEs. Here, we introduce a new method for the determination of CME temperature using a two filter (4025 Å and 3934 Å) coronagraph system. The thermal motion of free electrons in CMEs broadens the absorption lines in the optical spectra that are produced by the Thomson scattering of visible light originating in the photosphere, which affects the intensity ratio at two different wavelengths. Thus the CME temperature can be inferred from the intensity ratio measured by the two filter coronagraph system. We demonstrate the method by invoking the graduated cylindrical shell (GCS) model for the 3-dimensional CME density distribution and discuss its significance.