Comparisons of Photospheric Convection Cell Characteristics

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

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[7522] Solar Physics, Astrophysics, And Astronomy / Helioseismology, [7536] Solar Physics, Astrophysics, And Astronomy / Solar Activity Cycle

Scientific paper

Solar convection plays an important role in generating and structuring the solar magnetic field as well as a mechanism responsible for the 11-year solar cycle. The observed phenomena are strongly linked within both observational and physical regimes. Our main focus is the study of supergranulation from SOHO/MDI Dopplergrams. Suites of analysis methods are applied to time-series of Doppler images to quantitatively describe supergranule flow velocities, spatial scales and temporal lifetimes. SOHO/MDI magnetograms also show cellular structures, which trace the clustering of magnetic field lines around supergranule boundaries. These boundaries are extrapolated into the chromosphere where they are observed as a cellular network. We present preliminary results of applying methods similar to those applied to the Dopplergrams for estimating the spatial and temporal characteristics of this network. We extend our study to above the photosphere to the chromosphere where another cellular network is seen. Once again the responsibility lies with supergranulation. Spatial analysis on CaIIK data from the Precision Solar Photometric Telescope (PSPT) provides typical size scales for the network that can be compared to both the magnetogram network and supergranulation itself. Data comparisons over time can be made, notably between Doppler data received during the current (2008) and previous (1996) solar minima. Our provisional findings show that horizontal and radial velocity flows within supergranules are stronger during the current minimum, while the supergranules themselves appear larger during the previous minimum. However, comparable results are found for the 1/e lifetimes derived from each data set. We extend these provisional results by performing statistical analyses both within and between the various data sets.

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