Short-term evolution of sunspots

Swedish 1m Solar Telescope

Sunspots are the most prominent manifestation of magnetic fields in the solar atmosphere. They consist of two parts, a central dark umbra and a brighter penumbra surrounding it. Convection is largely inhibited in the umbra by the strong umbral field, but not so much in the penumbra. The interaction between convective motions and magnetic fields in the penumbra gives rise to impressive fine structure and dynamics, with elongated convective cells in the radial direction and a plethora of small-scale flows within those cells.

This movie shows the short-term variability of sunspots and granulation over the course of 40 minutes. The observations were taken through a broadband filter at 436.4 nm using the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope. They were processed to remove image blurring caused by turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere. Thanks to this technique, a very stable time series was obtained.

Download the movie clicking HERE

Movie credit: Michiel van Noort, Luc Rouppe van der Voort (ITA, University of Oslo)

Text credit: Luis Bellot Rubio (IAA-CSIC)

Source: SST Galleries