Environmental conditions responsible for solar activity
Abstract
During the past year, the Stanford group has continued its investigations into the origins of solar coronal activity. Solar activity occurs within a complex magnetic environment, which is determined by the entire history of magnetic flux emergence and surface flows at the underlying photosphere. One of the main achievements has been the development of a technique to reconstruct the coronal magnetic field above active regions from measurements of the magnetic field at the photosphere. To complement this empirical tool, the authors have continued theoretical work on the influence of photospheric shearing motions on the configuration and energy content of coronal fields. This work is shedding light on the nature of eruptive phenomena such as coronal mass ejections. They have also intensively evaluated the role of magnetohydrodynamic waves and reconnection in heating the solar atmosphere, and identified a number of promising coronal heating scenarios that will require detailed numerical modeling.
- Publication:
-
Stanford Univ. Report
- Pub Date:
- November 1993
- Bibcode:
- 1993stan.reptR....S
- Keywords:
-
- Photosphere;
- Solar Activity;
- Solar Magnetic Field;
- Solar Physics;
- Magnetic Field Reconnection;
- Magnetic Flux;
- Magnetohydrodynamic Waves;
- Solar Atmosphere;
- Solar Corona;
- Stellar Mass Ejection;
- Solar Physics