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Solar REU 2011

Solar REU 2011. Tom Elsden University of St Andrews, Scotland. Jewels of the Sun A Statistical Study of X-Ray Bright Point Energetics. Dr Steve Saar. Dr Paolo Grigis. Talk Outline. Introduction to X-ray bright points Purpose of the project What have we learned? What’s left to do?.

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Solar REU 2011

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  1. Solar REU 2011 Tom Elsden University of St Andrews, Scotland Jewels of the Sun A Statistical Study of X-Ray Bright Point Energetics

  2. Dr Steve Saar

  3. Dr Paolo Grigis

  4. Talk Outline • Introduction to X-ray bright points • Purpose of the project • What have we learned? • What’s left to do?

  5. Introduction to bright points • What are x-ray bright points (XBPs)? Bright Points!

  6. Basic Facts • What do we know about them? • Lifespan: 2 hours – 2 days • Size : 2-10 x104 km • Found at all latitudes • Temperature :1-2MK • Numbers: 100s – 1000s • Emerging magnetic flux approximately 10000 Missouri’s!

  7. Purpose of study • Perhaps small scale tells us of large scale • These little guys are relatively unstudied • Are all XBP’s simple magnetic bipoles? • What energizes them?

  8. The Solar Corona Image, Miloslav Druckmuller Image, SOHO website

  9. Coronal Temperature • Generally defined > 106 K. • Sharp rise in temperature, we believe to be caused by strong magnetic fields. • We can see the wavelengths used to observe bright • points. Image, Astronomy and Astrophysics

  10. (The magical) Bright Point Finder

  11. In the beginning… • Analysed the magnetic field in the photosphere. • Observed that this was not going to be as simple as first planned. • ‘Simple bipoles’ didn’t quite cover it.

  12. Rogue Bright Points HMI Magnetogram AIA 193Å image

  13. Aims • Bright point temperatures • Surrounding environment effects. • Orientation • Tangential flow in photosphere surrounding magnetic islands* • Magnetic flux vs emission

  14. We see a relatively normal distribution, with a gap to higher temperature BP’s caused by using the 211 filter for higher temperature bright points rather than 171 or 193.

  15. Orientation Joy’s Law & Hale’s law Expect two peaks at 315-360 & 180-225 degrees in top plot. Expect one peak at 315-360 degrees in bottom plot.

  16. Flow map Flow map courtesy Dr Karin Muglach

  17. => Bright points represent emerging magnetic flux!

  18. Future Work • Do more statistics! • Much more can be done with the flow maps, magnetic flux and temperature correlations. • Apply to much more data.

  19. Acknowledgements • Dr Steve Saar • Dr Paolo Grigis • Dr Karin Muglach • NASA grant NNX09AB03G to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. • Thanks SSXG!

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