The wounded Sun

Authors
Prof.
Paul S. Cally
Date and time
3 Jun 2015 - 10:30 Europe/London
Address

Aula

Talk language
English
Slides language
English
Serie number
1
Description

The Sun is a magnetic star, not as magnetic as some stars, or as it was when it
was younger, but nonetheless magnetic fields dominate and even construct its
atmosphere. There would be no corona without magnetic fields. The surface is
also dappled with small scale magnetic field associated with surface convection
cells, granules and supergranules. But sometimes we also see much larger and
more powerful Active Regions containing sunspots. These are wounds in the
surface of the Sun that allow waves and oscillations in the solar interior and
atmosphere to be coupled much more directly than they usually are. In
particular, they allow the Sun's internal seismology (the p-modes) to drive a
variety of waves through the Active Region atmosphere, and conversely, the
atmospheres to pollute the internal seismology. This makes active region
helioseismology a very challenging field.