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Register a new userRecovering the unsigned photospheric magnetic field from Ca II K observations
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Theodosios Chatzistergos
Publication date
2019
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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We reassess the relationship between the photospheric magnetic field strength and the Ca II K intensity for a variety of surface features as a function of the position on the disc and the solar activity level. This relationship can be used to recover the unsigned photospheric magnetic field from images recorded in the core of Ca II K line. We have analysed 131 pairs of high-quality, full-disc, near-co-temporal observations from SDO/HMI and Rome/PSPT spanning half a solar cycle. To analytically describe the observationally-determined relation, we considered three different functions: a power law with an offset, a logarithmic function, and a power law function of the logarithm of the magnetic flux density. We used the obtained relations to reconstruct maps of the line-of-sight component of the unsigned magnetic field (unsigned magnetograms) from Ca II K observations, which were then compared to the original magnetograms. We find that both power-law functions represent the data well, while the logarithmic function is good only for quiet periods. We see no significant variation over the solar cycle or over the disc in the derived fit parameters, independently of the function used. We find that errors in the independent variable, usually not accounted for, introduce attenuation bias. To address this, we binned the data with respect to the magnetic field strength and Ca II K contrast separately and derived the relation for the bisector of the two binned curves. The reconstructed unsigned magnetograms show good agreement with the original ones. RMS differences are less than 90 G. The results were unaffected by the stray-light correction of the SDO/HMI and Rome/PSPT data. Our results imply that Ca~II~K observations, accurately processed and calibrated, can be used to reconstruct unsigned magnetograms by using the relations derived in our study.
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Knowledge of solar irradiance variability is critical to Earths climate models and understanding the solar influence on Earths climate. Direct solar irradiance measurements are only available since 1978. Reconstructions of past variability typically rely on sunspot data. These provide only indirect information on the facular and network regions, which are decisive contributors to irradiance variability on timescales of the solar cycle and longer. Our ultimate goal is to reconstruct past solar irradiance variations using historical full-disc Ca II K observations to describe the facular contribution independently of sunspot observations. Here, we develop the method and test it extensively by using modern CCD-based Ca II K observations and carry out initial tests on two photographic archives. We employ carefully reduced and calibrated Ca II K images from 13 datasets, such as those from the Meudon, Mt Wilson, and Rome observatories. We convert them to unsigned magnetograms and then use them as input to the adapted SATIRE model to reconstruct TSI variations over the period 1978-2019, for which direct irradiance measurements are available. The reconstructed TSI from the analysed Ca II K archives agrees well with direct TSI measurements and existing reconstructions. The model also returns good results on data taken with different bandpasses and images with low spatial resolution. Historical Ca II K archives suffer from numerous inconsistencies, but we show that these archives can still be used to reconstruct TSI with reasonable accuracy provided the observations are accurately processed. By using the unsigned magnetograms of the Sun reconstructed from high-quality Ca II K observations as input into the SATIRE model, we can reconstruct solar irradiance variations nearly as accurately as from directly recorded magnetograms.
Context. The wings of the Ca II H and K lines provide excellent photospheric temperature diagnostics. At the Swedish 1-meter Solar Telescope the blue wing of Ca II H is scanned with a narrowband interference filter mounted on a rotation stage. This provides up to 010 spatial resolution filtergrams at high cadence that are concurrent with other diagnostics at longer wavelengths. Aims. The aim is to develop observational techniques that provide the photospheric temperature stratification at the highest spatial resolution possible and use those to compare simulations and observations at different heights. Methods. We use filtergrams in the Ca II H blue wing obtained with a tiltable interference filter at the SST. Synthetic observations are produced from 3D HD and 3D MHD numerical simulations and degraded to match the observations. The temperature structure obtained from applying the method to the synthetic data is compared with the known structure in the simulated atmospheres and with observations of an active region. Cross-correlation techniques using restored non-simultaneous continuum images are used to reduce high-altitude, small-scale seeing signal introduced from the non-simultaneity of the frames when differentiating data. Results. Temperature extraction using high resolution filtergrams in the Ca II H blue wing works reasonably well when tested with simulated 3D atmospheres. The cross-correlation technique successfully compensates the problem of small-scale seeing differences and provides a measure of the spurious signal from this source in differentiated data. Synthesized data from the simulated atmospheres (including pores) match well the observations morphologically at different observed heights and in vertical temperature gradients.
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