The quiet Sun (the 99%, or more, of the solar surface not covered by sunspots or active regions) is receiving increased attention in recent years; its role on the global magnetism and its complexity are being increasingly recognised. A picture of a rather stochastic quiet Sun magnetism is emerging . From these recent works, the quiet Sun magnetism is presented as a myriad of magnetic field vectors having an isotropical distribution with a cascade of scales down to the mean free path of the photon (1 marcsec, or 10km on the solar surface). But this chaotic representation also shows clear signs of intermittency: at a low frequency rate (0.022 events h-1 arcsec-2) the magnetic field appear in the quiet Sun forming well-organised loop structures at granular scales. Right figure shows an example of such small-scale loop (1 arcsec, or 1000 km on the solar surface). We cas see as it is formed by a myriad of nested field lines forming a spartial (and temporal) coherent structure. More interesting, these loops rise to higher layers (see left figure) and their energy input into the chromosphere can be important for the heating of this layer.
Advertised on
References
(2010)The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 714, Issue 2, pp. L94-97
It may interest you
-
The formation and evolution of the disk of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, remains an enigma in astronomy. In particular, the relationship between the thick disk and the thin disk —two key components of the Milky Way— is still unclear. Understanding the chemical and dynamical properties of the stars within these disks is crucial, especially in the parameter spaces where their characteristics overlap, such the metallicity regime around [Fe/H] ~ -0.7, which marks the metal-poor end of the thin disk, higher than that of the thick disk. This is often interpreted as an indication that the thin diskAdvertised on
-
The universality of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is one of the most widespread assumptions in modern Astronomy and yet, it might be flawed. While observations in the Milky Way generally support an IMF that is invariant with respect to the local conditions under which stars form, measurements of massive early-type galaxies systematically point towards a non-universal IMF. To bridge the gap between both sets of evidence, in this work we measured for the first time the low-mass end of the IMF from the integrated spectra of a Milky Way-like galaxy, NGC3351. We found that the slope ofAdvertised on
-
Observations made with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed a larger-than-expected number of massive galaxies when the Universe was still young. The focus of this study is precisely one of these galaxies, ZF-UDS-7329. It is a very compact object, and its spectrum suggests that it formed at a very early stage, when the Universe was around 2 billion years old. According to theoretical predictions, these objects first formed a generation of stars at the center of their dark matter halos and subsequently grew by merging with other halos. However, due to the random nature of theseAdvertised on