Although located at 150 million kilometers from Earth, the Sun is in our immediate neighborhood compared with all other stars. The observation of the Sun along the decades has provided amazingly detailed views of the structure and day-to-day life of a star; the high-resolution observations achieved from Earth and space in recent years, in particular, have facilitated reaching deep theoretical insights concerning the structure and evolution of stellar atmospheres and interiors.
The Sun constitutes a physics laboratory where the complex interactions between the matter (atoms, electrons and ions, or molecules) and the magnetic field can be studied in conditions difficult to reach in devices on Earth. Of particular interest for the public are the spectacular phenomena displayed by its atmosphere, its role in generating the magnetized clouds that, after traversing the interplanetary space, can impact on Earth's magnetosphere and lead to the potentially dangerous solar storms, and the mysteries of the solar interior. Understanding of all those phenomena is gained by a combination of refined theoretical methods and direct or indirect observation using leading-edge technologies.
The solar physics group at the IAC enjoys a leadership position in different branches of solar research in the world. This is exemplified by the award of four large research grants by the European Research Council in the past years to researchers of the group, by its leading role in the European Solar Telescope project, and by its participation in other international networks and instrument projects. Globally, the group combines theoretical methods (magneto-fluid dynamics and plasma physics, radiation transfer), including 3D numerical radiation-MHD modeling, and state-of-the-art observational and diagnostic techniques, to achieve deep understanding of what constitutes and drives the structure and activity of our star.
Solar Physics (FS)
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ProjectSolarLabSolarLab was an educational project of the IAC aimed at secondary and pre-university colleges in the Canaries. The project had at its disposal three telescopes...
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NewsSolving the paradox of the enigmatic solar sodium D1 line polarizationIn 1998 the journal Nature published a seminal letter concluding that the mysterious polarization (a particular property of light) that had been recently...
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PublicationSolving the Paradox of the Solar Sodium D<SUB>1</SUB> Line PolarizationTwenty-five years ago, enigmatic linear polarization signals were discovered in the core of the sodium D 1 line. The only explanation that could be found...
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PublicationSparse inversion of Stokes profiles. I. Two-dimensional Milne-Eddington inversionsContext. Inversion codes are numerical tools used to infer physical properties from observations. Despite their success, the quality of current...
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PublicationSpatial deconvolution of spectropolarimetric data: an application to quiet Sun magnetic elementsContext. One of the difficulties in extracting reliable information about the thermodynamical and magnetic properties of solar plasmas from spectropolarimetric...
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PublicationSpatially resolved measurements of the solar photospheric oxygen abundanceAims: We report the results of a novel determination of the solar oxygen abundance using spatially resolved observations and inversions. We seek to derive the...
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PublicationSpectro-polarimetric analysis of a short lived solar active regionThe physical processes related to the formation, evolution and disappearance of solar active regions are not completely clear. High-resolution solar spectro...
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PublicationSpectro-Polarimetric Imaging Reveals Helical Magnetic Fields in Solar Prominence FeetSolar prominences are clouds of cool plasma levitating above the solar surface and insulated from the million-degree corona by magnetic fields. They form in...
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PublicationSpectro-polarimetry in the era of large solar telescopesThis paper discusses some of the challenges of spectro-polarimetric observations with a large aperture solar telescope such as the ATST or the EST. The observer...