On the filamentary nature of solar magnetic fields

A method is presented for obtaining information about the unresolved filamentary structure of solar magnetic fields. A comparison is made of pairs of Mount Wilson magnetograph recordings made in the two spectral lines Fei 5250 Å and Fei 5233 Å obtained on 26 different days. Due to line weakenings and saturation in the magnetic filaments, the apparent field strengths measured in the 5250 Å line are too low, while the 5233 Å line is expected to give essentially correct results. From a comparison between the apparent field strengths and fluxes and their center to limb variations, we draw the following tentative conclusions: (a) More than 90 % of the total flux seen with a 17 by 17 arc sec magnetograph aperture is channeled through narrow filaments with very high field strengths in plages and at the boundaries of supergranular cells. (b) An upper limit for the interfilamentary field strength integrated over the same aperture seems to be about 3 G. (c) The field lines in a filament are confined in a very small region in the photosphere but spread out very rapidly higher up in the atmosphere. (d) All earlier Mount Wilson magnetograph data should be multiplied by a factor that is about 1.8 at the center of the disk and decreased toward the limb in order to give the correct value of the longitudinal magnetic field averaged over the scanning aperture.Guest Investigator at the Hale Observatories, on leave from Astronomical Observatory, Lund, Sweden.The National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation.