We present a visual determination of the number of bright points (BPs) existing in the quiet Sun, which are structures thought to trace intense kG magnetic concentrations. The measurement is based on a 0farcs1 angular resolution G-band movie obtained with the Swedish Solar Telescope at the solar disk center. We find 0.97 BPs Mm-2, which is a factor 3 larger than any previous estimate. It corresponds to 1.2 BPs per solar granule. Depending on the details of the segmentation, the BPs cover between 0.9% and 2.2% of the solar surface. Assuming their field strength to be 1.5 kG, the detected BPs contribute to the solar magnetic flux with an unsigned flux density between 13 G and 33 G. If network and inter-network regions are counted separately, they contain 2.2 BPs Mm-2 and 0.85 BPs Mm-2, respectively.
Advertised on
References
(2010) Magnetic bright points in the quiet Sun. ApJ, 715, L26
It may interest you
-
The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), through the European UNDARK project and together with CERN, has brought together international experts in cosmology, astrophysics and theoretical physics to analyse some of the discrepancies that are challenging our current understanding of the Universe. The aim is to determine whether they arise from effects in the observations that are not yet fully understood, or whether they conceal unknown physical phenomena still waiting to be discovered. We know more about the Universe than at any other time in history, and we can measure some of itsAdvertised on -
Nuclear star clusters are dense and compact stellar systems, with sizes of a few parsecs, found at the centers of many galaxies. Their formation is thought to be closely connected to the assembly history of their host galaxies, and astronomers think that these clusters contain important clues about how galaxies formed and evolved over cosmic time. Recent studies suggest that different formation pathways may operate in late- and early-type galaxies, but the dominant mechanisms and their dependence on galaxy morphology remain unclear. While most observational studies have focused on early-typeAdvertised on -
In the standard Lambda cold dark matter (Lambda-CDM) cosmology, galaxies grow by gradually accreting material and through mergers with other galaxies. This scenario successfully explains many large-scale cosmic structures, yet it struggles to account for the existence of numerous massive spiral galaxies in the local Universe that lack a prominent central bulge, pure disc systems, in the local Universe. Understanding how these galaxies form and survive is also essential for placing our own Galaxy, the Milky Way, into context, as it also hosts a low-mass bulge. In this study, we analyse 22Advertised on