Nice memories from a collaboration on sunspots
Abstract
Back in 1994, when I still was at the IAC, I had the idea of using the (by then) new SIR inversion code to a full vector spectropolarimetric map of a sunspot as obtained with the HAO's Advanced Stokes Polarimeter. The opportunity was open to study the three-dimensional structure of sunspots from a semi-empirical basis. A collaboration between HAO and IAC had already started a few years earlier with the stays in HAO of Jorge Sánchez Almeida and Valentín Martínez Pillet (today's NSO director) as postdocs. Direct contact with the champions of ASP, Andy and Bruce, Bruce and Andy, was hence granted and I readily suggested them to undertake the study with their data and our code in the frame of the PhD thesis of a new student of mine, Carlos Westendorp Plaza. A few years later (1997), the discovery that penumbral material comes back to the solar interior at the external penumbral border was published in the Nature journal. The paper was followed by a series in ApJ on an optical tomography of a sunspot. The friendly and enriching discussions with Andy and Bruce remain as one of the most rewarding experiences in my (already long) career.
- Publication:
-
Fifty Years of the Skumanich Relations
- Pub Date:
- March 2022
- Bibcode:
- 2022fysr.confE..52D