High resolution reconstruction of solar prominence images observed by the New Vacuum Solar Telescope

A high resolution image showing fine structures is crucial for understanding the nature of solar prominence. In this paper, high resolution imaging of solar prominence on the New Vacuum Solar Telescope (NVST) is introduced, using speckle masking. Each step of the data reduction especially the image alignment is discussed. Accurate alignment of all frames and the non-isoplanatic calibration of each image are the keys for a successful reconstruction. Reconstructed high resolution images from NVST also indicate that under normal seeing condition, it is feasible to carry out high resolution observations of solar prominence by a ground-based solar telescope, even in the absence of adaptive optics.     

A full-disk image standardisation of the synoptic solar observations at the Meudon Observatory

Robust techniques are developed to put the H and Ca K line full-disk images taken at the Meudon Observatory into a standardised form of a `virtual solar image'. The techniques include limb fitting, removal of geometrical distortion, centre position and size standardisation and intensity normalisation. The limb fitting starts with an initial estimate of the solar centre using raw 12-bit image data and then applies a Canny edge-detection routine. Candidate edge points for the limb are selected using a histogram based method and the chosen points fitted to a quadratic function by minimising the algebraic distance using SVD. The five parameters of the ellipse fitting the limb are extracted from the quadratic function. These parameters are used to define an affine transformation that transforms the image shape into a circle. Transformed images are generated using the nearest neighbour, bilinear or bicubic interpolation. Intensity renormalisation is also required because of a limb darkening and other non-radial intensity variations. It is achieved by fitting a background function in polar coordinates to a set of sample points having the median intensities and by standardising the average brightness. Representative examples of intermediate and final processed results are presented in addition to the algorithms developed. The research was done for the European Grid of Solar Observations (EGSO) project.     

The Herschel effect and solar photography

A method of photographing the solar image in the UV part of the solar spectrum is described. The resulting images show the bright photospheric network of Sheeley and Chapman; these have been recorded at the small central distance of 20°. During a flare of importance 1b near a spot group, no detectable changes in the spots, their relative positions or the bright photospheric network could be observed.     

High-frequency oscillations in a solar active region coronal loop

The Solar Eclipse Corona Imaging System (SECIS) was used to record high-cadence observations of the solar corona during the total solar eclipse of 1999 August 11. During the 2 min 23.5 s of totality, 6364 images were recorded simultaneously in each of the two channels: a white light channel, and the Fe  xiv (5303 Å) 'green line' channel ( T ∼2 MK) . Here we report initial results from the SECIS experiment, including the discovery of a 6-s intensity oscillation in an active region coronal loop.     

Analysis of Diameter Measurements Performed at Calern Observatory Astrolabe

Solar diameter measurements performed at Calern Observatory astrolabe during more than two solar cycles show variations at various time scales in a broad range. Due to seasonal effects and instrumental characteristics, the recorded data are not sampled uniformly and present some gaps during these years. This time series has been analyzed by means of a deconvolution of the window function, as an alternative method to the standard least square fits of harmonic functions. The results show an extremely important improvement of the power spectrum. Harmonic terms already found by other authors are confirmed but new frequencies are also revealed by this analysis.     

太阳宁静区的高分辨率像复原

本文介绍在怀柔６０ｃｍ多通道太阳望远镜上运用斑点干涉像复原方法所取得的一些初步结果,对用短暴光方法（暴光时间不大于１０毫秒）获得的一系列“冻结”大气后的目标像用斑点干涉像复原方法进行处理,即可获得消除了地球大气影响的目标复原像,斑点掩模法即为斑点干涉像复原方法的一种,我们用它对日面中心的宁静区米粒进行处理,复原出了分率不劣于０．〃５的白光米粒象。     

Fractal-Based Fuzzy Technique For Detection Of Active Regions From Solar Images

Fractal concepts are used to describe the irregular structures and regions of interest of solar images. The most common and easiest way to extract regions of interest from an image is through segmentation. Segmentation techniques vary from conventional edge-detection mechanism to fuzzy c-means clustering. In this study, the pixelwise local fractal dimension of solar images is computed by different techniques. This is followed by different segmentation procedures including the fuzzy-based approach, for extracting the active regions from chromospheric images and assessing their performance. These techniques have also been applied on solar images to extract active regions from Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) Extreme Ultraviolet Telescope (EIT) images.     

Shift-and-add reconstruction of solar granulation images

To restore an atmospherically degraded image of solar granulation the shift-and-add (SAA) method is applied to its specklegrams. It is the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that such a technique has been used for image reconstruction of solar granulation, a largely extended target. SAA, therefore, enables us to monitor restored images of solar granulation in a simple and fast way.     

Quasi-stereoscopic imaging of the solar X-ray corona

The first published three-dimensional images of the solar X-ray corona, obtained by means of solar rotational parallax, are presented in stereographic form. Image pairs approximately 12 hours apart during times of stable coronal conditions were selected from the digitized images obtained with theSkylab X-ray Spectrographic Telescope. The image resolution limit is approximately 10 arc sec. Many coronal structures not visible in the separate images are clearly observed when the image pairs are viewed stereoscopically. This method gives a preview of the potential resources for solar research and forecasting of solar-geomagnetic interactions that could be provided by stereoscopic observations of the Sun using a small group of spacecraft. The method is also applicable to other X-ray, ultraviolet, or other wavebands in which the corona has extended, transparent structure.     

New vacuum solar telescope and observations with high resolution

The New Vacuum Solar Telescope(NVST) is a one meter vacuum solar telescope that aims to observe fine structures on the Sun. The main goals of NVST are high resolution imaging and spectral observations, including measurements of the solar magnetic field. NVST is the primary ground-based facility used by the Chinese solar research community in this solar cycle. It is located by Fuxian Lake in southwest China, where the seeing is good enough to perform high resolution observations. We first introduce the general conditions at the Fuxian Solar Observatory and the primary science cases of NVST. Then, the basic structures of this telescope and instruments are described in detail. Finally, some typical high resolution data of the solar photosphere and chromosphere are also shown.     

Automatic Solar Filament Detection Using Image Processing Techniques

We present an automatic solar filament detection algorithm based on image enhancement, segmentation, pattern recognition, and mathematical morphology methods. This algorithm cannot only detect filaments, but can also identify spines, footpoints, and filament disappearances. It consists of five steps: (1) The stabilized inverse diffusion equation (SIDE) is used to enhance and sharpen filament contours. (2) A new method for automatic threshold selection is proposed to extract filaments from local background. (3) The support vector machine (SVM) is used to differentiate between sunspots and filaments. (4) Once a filament is identified, morphological thinning, pruning, and adaptive edge linking methods are used to determine the filament properties. (5) Finally, we propose a filament matching method to detect filament disappearances. We have successfully applied the algorithm to Hα full-disk images obtained at Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO). It has the potential to become the foundation of an automatic solar filament detection system, which will enhance our capabilities of forecasting and predicting geo-effective events and space weather.     

JPEG2000 Image Compression on Solar EUV Images

For future solar missions as well as ground-based telescopes, efficient ways to return and process data have become increasingly important. Solar Orbiter, which is the next ESA/NASA mission to explore the Sun and the heliosphere, is a deep-space mission, which implies a limited telemetry rate that makes efficient onboard data compression a necessity to achieve the mission science goals. Missions like the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and future ground-based telescopes such as the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, on the other hand, face the challenge of making petabyte-sized solar data archives accessible to the solar community. New image compression standards address these challenges by implementing efficient and flexible compression algorithms that can be tailored to user requirements. We analyse solar images from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument onboard SDO to study the effect of lossy JPEG2000 (from the Joint Photographic Experts Group 2000) image compression at different bitrates. To assess the quality of compressed images, we use the mean structural similarity (MSSIM) index as well as the widely used peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) as metrics and compare the two in the context of solar EUV images. In addition, we perform tests to validate the scientific use of the lossily compressed images by analysing examples of an on-disc and off-limb coronal-loop oscillation time-series observed by AIA/SDO.     

Study of Differences Between Sunspot and White Light Facular Area Data Determined from SDO/HMI and SOHO/MDI Observations

Sunspot and white light facular areas are important data for solar activity and are used, for example, in the study of the evolution of sunspots and their effect on solar irradiance. Solar Dynamic Observatory??s Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (SDO/HMI) solar images have much higher resolution (??0.5????pixel^?1) than Solar and Heliospheric Observatory??s Michelson Doppler Imager (SOHO/MDI) solar images (??2????pixel^?1). This difference in image resolution has a significant impact on the sunspot and white light facular areas measured in the two datasets. We compare the area of sunspots and white light faculae derived from SDO/HMI and SOHO/MDI observations. This comparison helps the calibration of the SOHO sunspot and facular area to those in SDO observations. We also find a 0.22 degree difference between the North direction in SDO/HMI and SOHO/MDI images.     

Considerations for the next generation of solar telescopes: A systems approach to solar physics

The exciting new high resolution images from the one meter Sunrise balloon telescope and the first images from the 1.6 meter Big Bear telescope together with the continuing data from the 1 meter Swedish Solar Observatory demonstrate the promise of the new generation of multimeter solar telescopes. While the promise of the new generation of telescopes is great the technical challenges to build them will require the efforts of a significant fraction of the solar community. In this talk I will emphasize the need for an integrated systems approach to the development of the telescope, its instruments, its software, and its operations and management structures. The experience of several decades of space mission has taught us a great deal about the value of planning mission development from the definition of the primary scientific objectives to the delivery of the data to the science community. Much of these lessons learned, often painfully, should provide guidance to those in developing the new telescope systems (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Positions of sunspot groups and solar rotation

The question is studied whether the one-year solar oscillation found by V. F. Chistyakov for the years 1965–1973 can be traced in the observations of sunspots of 1874–1971 published by Greenwich Observatory. The result is negative. But the study leads to the following two conclusions: (1) The average observable centres of gravity of spot groups are variably displaced towards the central meridian or towards the limb, the time scale of this variability being of the order of 70 years. Thus the angular velocity should be determined from recurrent groups in transit of the central meridian only. (2) The angular velocity will be smaller when determined from older spots.Proceedings of the 14th ESLAB Symposium on Physics of Solar Variations, 16–19 September 1980, Scheveningen, The Netherlands.     

Automated Detection of Low-Contrast Solar Features Using the Phase-Congruency Algorithm

We propose a new feature-detection technique based on phase-congruency (PC) measurements to automatically recognize or enhance faint features in solar observations, such as off-limb coronal loops and umbral dots. Compared with other feature-detection methods that are based on gradient illuminance and imaging filtering, PC-based measurements are particular efficient for recognizing faint features, which generally have a low-intensity contrast to their surroundings. In the present article, we carry out a PC-based measurement of the local weighted mean phase angle (LWMPA) at each point in an image to indicate or highlight low-contrast features. We first used artificial images to check the detection accuracy and sensitivity to the noise of this approach. Subsequently, we applied this approach to an EUV observation obtained by the Solar Dynamics Observatory/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly to highlight off-limb coronal loops, and a photospheric observation obtained by the Hinode/Solar Optical Telescope to recognize faint dots within the cores of sunspots and pores. The results illustrate that this PC-based measurement of the LWMPA is a robust detection method for faint structures in solar observations.     

Short-term solar flare prediction using image-case-based reasoning

Solar flares strongly influence space weather and human activities,and their prediction is highly complex. The existing solutions such as data based approaches and model based approaches have a common shortcoming which is the lack of human engagement in the forecasting process. An image-case-based reasoning method is introduced to achieve this goal. The image case library is composed of SOHO/MDI longitudinal magnetograms, the images from which exhibit the maximum horizontal gradient, the length of the neutral line and the number of singular points that are extracted for retrieving similar image cases. Genetic optimization algorithms are employed for optimizing the weight assignment for image features and the number of similar image cases retrieved. Similar image cases and prediction results derived by majority voting for these similar image cases are output and shown to the forecaster in order to integrate his/her experience with the final prediction results. Experimental results demonstrate that the case-based reasoning approach has slightly better performance than other methods,and is more efficient with forecasts improved by humans.     

Automatic detection of sunspots on solar continuum HMI images blending local–global threshold

A huge collection of solar images to visualize sunspot are acquired by various solar observatories spread across the globe. This necessitates efficient tools for detecting and analyzing the sunspots encompassing diverse solar features. One such contribution is delivered in this work by exploiting the intrinsic intensity variations of solar images associated with sunspots and their attributes. The presented mechanism initially, pre-processes the acquired solar images by correcting the intensity variations introduced while profiling from the sun center to the limb followed by smoothening using a localized window. The resultant is then differenced from the global threshold that is obtained as a result of the statistical analysis computed over the probability distribution function of the input image. This arrangement offers higher discerning variations concerned with the local contextual structures related to sunspot, umbra, and penumbra. Also, it captures the major gradient variation between these regions that adds to the pixel heterogeneity surrounding them to finally render an automatic sunspot detection mechanism distinguishing the diverse solar regions. Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) investigation on annual solar images in Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) format reveals the presented method’s efficacy. Also, Pearson correlation analysis of the evaluated sunspot numbers from the detected sunspots with the solar catalog reveals the scheme’s detection closeness. Moreover, the model’s simplicity analyzed along the time and space dimensions affirms its extension to real-time analysis