Chromospheric Sunspot Oscillations in Hα and Ca ii 8542 Å

We study chromospheric oscillations including umbral flashes and running penumbral waves in a sunspot of active region NOAA 11242 using scanning spectroscopy in Hα and Ca?ii 8542 Å with the Fast Imaging Solar Spectrograph (FISS) at the 1.6 meter New Solar Telescope at the Big Bear Solar Observatory. A bisector method is applied to spectral observations to construct chromospheric Doppler-velocity maps. Temporal-sequence analysis of these shows enhanced high-frequency oscillations inside the sunspot umbra in both lines. Their peak frequency gradually decreases outward from the umbra. The oscillation power is found to be associated with magnetic-field strength and inclination, with different relationships in different frequency bands.     

Small-Scale Activity Above the Penumbra of a Fast-Rotating Sunspot

High-resolution observations of small-scale activity above the filamentary structure of a fast-rotating sunspot of NOAA Active Region 10930 are presented. The penumbral filament that intrudes into the umbra shows a central dark core and substructures. It almost approached another end of the umbra, like a light bridge. The chromospheric Ca ii H images show many jet-like structures with a bright leading edge above it. These bright jets move across the filament tips and show coordinated up and down motions. Transition region images also show brightening at the same location above the intrusion. Coronal 195 Å images suggest that one end of the bright coronal loop footpoints resides in this structure. The intrusion has opposite polarity with respect to the umbra. Strong downflows are observed at the edges along the length of the intrusion where the opposite-polarity field is enhanced. We also observe a counter-Evershed flow in the filamentary structure that also displays brightening and energy dissipation in the upper atmosphere. This scenario suggests that the jets and brightenings are caused by low-altitude reconnection driven by opposite-polarity fields and convective downflows above such structures.     

Near-infrared CCD observations of umbral dots

Umbral fine structures have been observed at 8500 Å using a new CCD detector. Four frames with diffraction-limited seeing were obtained. Between 68 and 91 umbral dots with a brightness contrast greater than 2% were found in each frame, although no dots were found in the darkest part of the umbra. The intrinsic flux of the umbral dots varies widely, indicating that their intrinsic brightness does as well. The mean dot lifetime is estimated as 15 min, although some dots were observed to live more than 2 h. Some of the umbral dots are flowing into the umbra at speeds up to 0.5 km s^-1. These dots have higher than average contrast and are associated with penumbral grains.     

On some characteristics of umbral fine structure

Photographic spectra of the umbra of a sunspot (1971, August 24, Rome No. 6205) around 6150 Å show fine bright threads which were identified as the spectra of a lightbridge, of the bright end of a penumbral filament and of umbral dots, respectively. It was found, in agreement with the results of other authors, that the magnetic field in bright structures is considerably weaker than in dark umbral material. Analysis of line profiles of Fe ii 6149.2 Å in umbral dots indicates (a) a fieldstrength reduced by a factor 2 compared to the surroundings, (b) an outflow with v3.0 km s^–1 relative to the penumbra and (c) possibly photospheric temperatures in umbral dots.Mitteilungen aus dem Fraunhofer Institut Nr. 115.     

Active Region Coronal Rain Event Observed by the Fast Imaging Solar Spectrograph on the NST

The Fast Imaging Solar Spectrograph (FISS) is being operated on the New Solar Telescope of the Big Bear Solar Observatory. It simultaneously records spectra of Hα and Ca ii 8542 Å lines, and this dual-spectra measurement provides an estimate of the temperature and nonthermal speed components. We observed a loop structure in AR 11305 using the FISS, SDO/AIA, and STEREO/EUVI in 304 Å, and found plasma material falling along the loop from a coronal height into the umbra of a sunspot, which accelerated up to 80 km?s^?1. We also observed C2 and C7 flare events near the loop. The temperature of the downflows was in the range of 10?000?–?33?000 K, increasing toward the umbra. The temperature of the flow varied with time, and the temperature near the footpoint rose immediately after the C7 flare, but the temperature toward the umbra remained the same. There seemed to be a temporal correlation between the amount of downflow material and the observed C-class flares. The downflows decreased gradually soon after the flares and then increased after a few hours. These high-speed red-shift events occurred continuously during the observations. The flows observed on-disk in Hα and Ca ii 8542 Å appeared as fragmented, fuzzy condensed material falling from the coronal heights when seen off-limb with STEREO/EUVI at 304 Å. Based on these observations, we propose that these flows were an on-disk signature of coronal rain.     

A Flare and Umbral Flashes in a Sunspot

We studied the evolution and dynamic processes in the chromosphere above a sunspot umbra. A relatively rarely occurring phenomenon of bright long-lasting emission observed in the umbra of a unipolar sunspot of the AR 9570 group on August 11, 2001 was investigated. It was found that during the course of the observation, emission was spreading, gradually occupying nearly the entire sunspot umbra. Based on the analysis of the observations from other observatories, we arrived at the conclusion that the bright emission was a sympathetic flare that occurred in the sunspot umbra. It was assumed that there occurred an interaction with a neighboring, rapidly evolving group that exhibited subflares on the day of observation. In the same umbra, there was taking place an oscillatory process of the type of umbral flash (observations from August 11 and 12, 2001). The characteristics of the oscillatory process in the presence of the flare were studied. As the bright emission propagated in the sunspot umbra, brightness fluctuations ceased to be seen in the umbral flashes against the background of this brighter emission. The character of velocity variations did not change substantially, although the oscillation amplitude did decrease.     

Umbral oscillations and penumbral waves in Hα

We present examples of umbral oscillations observed on Big Bear H filtergram movies and investigate the relation between umbral oscillations and running penumbral waves occurring in the same sunspot. Umbral oscillations near the center of the umbra are probably physically independent of the penumbral waves because the period of these umbral oscillations (150 s) is shorter than the penumbral wave period (270 s) but not a harmonic. We also report dark puffs which emerge from the edge of the umbra and move outward across the penumbra, and which have the same period as the running penumbral waves. We interpret these dark puffs to be the extension of chromospheric umbral oscillations at the edge of the umbra. It is suggested that the dark puffs and the running penumbral waves have a common source: photospheric oscillations just inside the umbra.     

Proper motion measurements of umbral and penumbral structure

Horizontal proper motions of penumbral structure and umbral dots have been measured from a 17-min-long time series of sunspot images by numerical techniques. In the penumbra, inflows are seen to occur predominantly in the inner region, with an average velocity of 290 m s^–1. Penumbral outflows take place mostly in the outer part, where they reach velocities as high as 1.5 km s^–1, with an average velocity of 500 m s^–1. In the umbra, proper motions of 28 bright dots have been measured with an accuracy better than 50 m s^–1. The mean velocity of the umbral dots is 210 m s^–1. Most of the umbral dots display the well-known inward motion away from the peripheral umbra.     

On the sunspot structure

The fine structure of a sunspot is studied on a series of photographs obtained during the third flight of the Soviet Stratospheric Solar Station. The main results are as follows:

1. The micro-photometer tracings on the frames show extremely high Rayleigh resolution of small elements, the smallest distances being near to the theoretical limit. The half-widths of the brighter elements are given in Tables III and VI. The corrected brightness of umbral dots has large dispersion.
2. The dimensions of the smallest dots are equal to the diffraction image of bright points. So the real radii of these objects are smaller than 150km, which is consistent with opaque models of sunspot umbra.
3. The penumbra and umbra structure (dark and bright objects) is in good agreement with the picture of magnetic field splitting in a system of magnetic ropes giving rise to the magnetic arcs in the chromosphere and corona. Only in the umbra do we meet the large scale continuities.

     

On the generation of umbral flashes and running penumbral waves

From a review of the observed properties of umbral flashes and running penumbral waves it is proposed that the source of these periodic phenomena is the oscillatory convection which Danielson and Savage (1968) and Savage (1969) ave shown is likely to occur in the superadiabatic subphotospheric layers of sunspot umbras. Periods and growth rates are computed for oscillatory modes arising in a simple two-layer model umbra. The results suggest that umbral flashes result from disturbances produced by oscillatory convection occurring in the upper subphotospheric layer of the umbra where the superadiabatic temperature gradient is much enhanced over that in lower layers, while running penumbral waves are due to oscillations in a layer just below this upper layer.     

Dynamic phenomena in the chromospheric layer of a sunspot

We have studied running penumbral waves, umbral oscillations, umbral flashes and their interrelations from H observations of a large isolated sunspot. Using a subtraction image processing technique we removed the sharp intensity gradient between the umbra and the penumbra and enhanced the low contrast, fine features. We observed running penumbral waves which started in umbral elements with a size of a few arcseconds, covered the umbra and subsequently propagated through the penumbra. The period of the waves was 190 s and the mean propagation velocity was about 15 km s^–1. We detected intense brightenings, located between umbral elements from where waves started, which had the characteristics of umbral flashes. There are indications that umbral flashes are related to the propagation of the waves through the umbra and their coupling. The subtraction images also show considerable fine structure in the chromospheric umbra, with size between 0.3 and 0.8.     

Kinematics of Umbral Dots: Their Typical Area,Brightness and Lifetime

The statistical properties of area and brightness of umbral dots, formed in a sunspot umbra observed on 18 June 2004, are studied using an improved method of image segmentation and feature tracking algorithm. Central (peripheral) umbral dots have a typical size around 0.16 (0.17) arcsec. The brightness distribution of umbral dots shows a multi-population distribution. The brightness of the central umbral dots does not exceed 0.6 I _quiet. In most cases, the area of central (peripheral) umbral dots reaches its maximum 40 s (150 s) after their brightness maximum, respectively. The brightness of umbral dots does not show any directly proportional behavior with their lifetimes and areas. The temporal variations of some physical parameters of umbral dots are studied. It seems that these variations are not physical processes in an umbra and are correlated to the images quality (seeing variations). The lifetime distribution of umbral dots is an exponential function and central (peripheral) umbral dots have a typical half-life of about 300 s (180 s), respectively.     

Enhanced p-Mode Absorption Seen Near the Sunspot Umbral – Penumbral Boundary

We investigate p-mode absorption in a sunspot using SOHO/MDI high-resolution Doppler images. The Doppler power computed from a 3.5-hour data set is used for studying the absorption in a sunspot. The result shows an enhancement in absorption near the umbral?–?penumbral boundary of the sunspot. We attempt to relate the observed absorption with the magnetic-field structure of the sunspot. The transverse component of the potential field is computed by using the observed SOHO/MDI line-of-sight magnetograms. A comparison of the power map and the computed potential field shows enhanced absorption near the umbral?–?penumbral boundary where the computed transverse field strength is higher.     

Doppler Shifts of the Hα Line and the Ca ii 854.2 nm Line in a Quiet Region of the Sun Observed with the FISS/NST

The characteristics of Doppler shifts in a quiet region of the Sun are compared between the Hα line and the Ca?ii infrared line at 854.2 nm. A small area of 16″×40″ was observed for about half an hour with the Fast Imaging Solar Spectrograph (FISS) of the 1.6 meter New Solar Telescope (NST) at Big Bear Solar Observatory. The observed area contains a network region and an internetwork region, and identified in the network region are fibrils and bright points. We infer Doppler velocity v _m from each line profile at each individual point with the lambdameter method as a function of half wavelength separation Δλ. It is confirmed that the bisector of the spatially averaged Ca?ii line profile has an inverse C-shape with a significant peak redshift of +?1.8 km?s^?1. In contrast, the bisector of the spatially averaged Hα line profile has a C-shape with a small peak blueshift of ??0.5 km?s^?1. In both lines, the bisectors of bright network points are significantly redshifted not only at the line centers, but also at the wings. The Ca?ii Doppler shifts are found to be correlated with the Hα ones with the strongest correlation occurring in the internetwork region. Moreover, we find that here the Doppler shifts in the two lines are essentially in phase. We discuss the physical implications of our results in view of the formation of the Hα line and Ca?ii 854.2 nm line in the quiet region chromosphere.     

High‐resolution observations of extremely bright penumbral grains

We observed a cluster of extremely bright penumbral grains located at the inner limb‐side penumbra of the leading sunspot in active region NOAA 10892. The penumbral grains in the cluster showed a typical peak intensity of 1.58 times the intensity I₀ of the granulation surrounding the sunspot. The brightest specimen even reached values of 1.8–2.0 I₀, thus, exceeding the temperatures of the brightest granules in the immediate surroundings of the sunspot. We find that the observed sample of extremely bright penumbral grains is an intermittent phenomenon, that disappears on time scales of hours. Horizontal flow maps indicating proper motions reveal that the cluster leaves a distinct imprint on the penumbral flow field. We find that the divergence line co‐located with the cluster is displaced from the middle penumbra closer towards the umbra and that the radial outflow velocities are significantly increased to speeds in excess of 2 km s^–1. The extremely bright penumbral grains, which are located at the inner limb‐side penumbra, are also discernible in offband Hα images down to Hα ± 0.045 nm. We interpret the observations in the context of the moving flux tube model arguing that hotter than normal material is rapidly ascending along the inner footpoint of the embedded flux tube, i.e., the ascending hot material is the cause of the extremely bright penumbral grains. This study is based on speckle‐reconstructed broad‐band images taken at 600 nm and chromospheric Hα observations obtained with two‐dimensional spectroscopy. All data were taken with adaptive optics under very good seeing conditions at the Dunn Solar Telescope, National Solar Observatory/Sacramento Peak, New Mexico on 2006 June 10. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Identification of Sunspots on Full-Disk Solar Images Using Wavelet Analysis

A new method to detect sunspots on full-disk solar images, recorded in an optical wide spectral band and in the line of Ca ii K₁, is presented. It is based on the compact wavelet transform and a process that automatically identifies the noise in the images of the Sun. This method estimates also its center and the limb positions with a precision of a few milliarcseconds. Precisions of 1 and 8 milliarcseconds are, respectively, found for the disk center position and the radius of simulated solar images. The results obtained on sunspot identification on solar images recorded during April 2002 at Meudon Observatory (France) reveal that we are able to detect 3.35 % additional sunspots compared to a manual method. Our method preserves the sunspot areas better than 95 %.     

Multiwavelength Study of the M8.9/3B Solar Flare from AR NOAA 10960

We present a multiwavelength analysis of a long-duration, white-light solar flare (M8.9/3B) event that occurred on 04 June 2007 from AR NOAA 10960. The flare was observed by several spaceborne instruments, namely SOHO/MDI, Hinode/SOT, TRACE, and STEREO/SECCHI. The flare was initiated near a small, positive-polarity, satellite sunspot at the center of the active region, surrounded by opposite-polarity field regions. MDI images of the active region show a considerable amount of changes in the small positive-polarity sunspot of δ configuration during the flare event. SOT/G-band (4305 Å) images of the sunspot also suggest the rapid evolution of this positive-polarity sunspot with highly twisted penumbral filaments before the flare event, which were oriented in a counterclockwise direction. It shows the change in orientation, and also the remarkable disappearance of twisted penumbral filaments (≈35?–?40%) and enhancement in umbral area (≈45?–?50%) during the decay phase of the flare. TRACE and SECCHI observations reveal the successive activation of two helically-twisted structures associated with this sunspot, and the corresponding brightening in the chromosphere as observed by the time-sequence of SOT/Ca?ii H line (3968 Å) images. The secondary, helically-twisted structure is found to be associated with the M8.9 flare event. The brightening starts six?–?seven minutes prior to the flare maximum with the appearance of a secondary, helically-twisted structure. The flare intensity maximizes as the secondary, helically-twisted structure moves away from the active region. This twisted flux tube, associated with the flare triggering, did not launch a CME. The location of the flare activity is found to coincide with the activation site of the helically-twisted structures. We conclude that the activation of successive helical twists (especially the second one) in the magnetic-flux tubes/ropes plays a crucial role in the energy build-up process and the triggering of the M-class solar flare without a coronal mass ejection (CME).     

Shapes and centre-to-limb variation of the H and K lines in sunspot umbrae

The shapes of the Ca ii H and K lines in sunspot umbral spectra vary from single asymmetric peaks near the centre of the disk to almost symmetric double peaks at the limb. In addition, there are other differences in the behaviour of both H and K lines in sunspots compared to the quiet Sun. The whole complex of the phenomena observed can not be explained by large scale chromosphere motions. Instead, a satisfactory model reproducing in detail peculiarities of the umbral emission reversals contains a cloud of emitting and absorbing gas located above the chromosphere, which flows into the sunspot. The radiation field parameters in such a cloud are consistent with the concept of weak quiescent prominences above the umbra.     

Applying an Automatic Image-Processing Method to Synoptic Observations

We used an automatic image-processing method to detect solar-activity features observed in white light at the Kislovodsk Solar Station. This technique was applied to automatically or semi-automatically detect sunspots and active regions. The results of this automated recognition were verified with statistical data available from other observatories and revealed a high detection accuracy. We also provide parameters of sunspot areas, of the umbra, and of faculae as observed in Solar Cycle 23 as well as the magnetic flux of these active elements, calculated at the Kislovodsk Solar Station, together with white-light images and magnetograms from the Michaelson Doppler Imager onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO/MDI). The ratio of umbral and total sunspot areas during Solar Cycle 23 is ≈?0.19. The area of sunspots of the leading polarity was approximately 2.5 times the area of sunspots of the trailing polarity.     

A Curious History of Sunspot Penumbrae

Daily records of sunspot group areas compiled by the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, from May of 1874 through 1976 indicate a curious history for the penumbral areas of the smaller sunspot groups. On average, the ratio of penumbral area to umbral area in a sunspot group increases from 5 to 6 as the total sunspot group area increases from 100 to 2000 μHem (a μHem is 10^?6 the area of a solar hemisphere). This relationship does not vary substantially with sunspot group latitude or with the phase of the sunspot cycle. However, for the sunspot groups with total areas <?100 μHem, this ratio changes dramatically and systematically through this historical record. The ratio for these smallest sunspots is near 5.5 from 1874 to 1900. After a rapid rise to more than 7 in 1905, it drops smoothly to less than 3 by 1930 and then rises smoothly back to more than 7 in 1961. It then returns to near 5.5 from 1965 to 1976. The smooth variation from 1905 to 1961 shows no indication of any step-like changes that might be attributed to changes in equipment or personnel. The overall level of solar activity was increasing monotonically during this time period when the penumbra-to-umbra area ratio dropped to less than half its peak value and then returned. If this history can be confirmed by other observations (e.g. Mt. Wilson or Kodaikanal), it may impact our understanding of penumbra formation, our dynamo models, and our estimates of historical changes in the solar irradiance.