We present observations of the magnetic landscape of the polar region of the Sun that are unprecedented in terms of spatial resolution, field of view, and polarimetric precision. They were carried out with the Solar Optical Telescope aboard Hinode. Using a Milne-Eddington inversion, we find many vertically oriented magnetic flux tubes with field

We investigate the radial variation of the magnetic field structure across sunspots, pores and azimuth centers (ACs). We define ACs as magnetic structures of about the same size as pores (all structures studied here are larger than 3 Mm diameter), but without a clear (at least 5%) continuum decrease associated with them. We start from the full 3D

The solar magnetism is no more considered as a purely superficial phenomenon. The SoHO community has shown that the length of the solar cycle depends on the transition region between radiation and convection. Nevertheless, the internal solar (stellar) magnetism stays poorly known. Starting in 2008, the American instrument HMI/SDO and the European

When the polarimetric sensitivity and the angular resolution exceed a threshold, magnetic fields show up almost everywhere on the solar surface. Here I revise the observational properties of the weakest polarization signals, which appear in the InterNetwork (IN) regions. We already have some information on the magnetic field strengths and

The mass of CoRoT-7b, the first transiting super-Earth exoplanet, is still a subject of debate. A wide range of masses have been reported in the literature ranging from as high as 8 M ⊕ to as low as 2.3 M ⊕. This range in mass is largely due to the activity level of the star that contributes a significant amount of radial velocity (RV) "jitter" and

Context. The “mass discrepancy” in massive O stars represents a long-standing problem in stellar astrophysics with far-reaching implications for the chemical and dynamical feedback in galaxies. Aims: Our goal is to investigate this mass discrepancy by comparing state-of-the-art model masses with model-independent masses determined from eclipsing