Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2009-08-26
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
4 pages, 2 figures; proceedings article for Joint Discussion 10 at the IAU General Assembly, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 20
Scientific paper
For many years, there seemed to be significant differences between the continuum intensity distributions derived from observations and simulations of the solar photosphere. In order to settle the discussion on these apparent discrepancies, we present a detailed comparison between simulations and seeing-free observations that takes into account the crucial influence of instrumental image degradation. We use a set of images of quiet Sun granulation taken in the blue, green and red continuum bands of the Broadband Filter Imager of the Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) onboard Hinode. The images are deconvolved with Point Spread Functions (PSF) that account for non-ideal contributions due to instrumental stray-light and imperfections. In addition, synthetic intensity images are degraded with the corresponding PSFs. The results are compared with respect to spatial power spectra, intensity histograms, and the centre-to-limb variation of the intensity contrast. The observational findings are well matched with corresponding synthetic observables from three-dimensional radiation (magneto-)hydrodynamic simulations. We conclude that the intensity contrast of the solar continuum intensity is higher than usually derived from ground-based observations and is well reproduced by modern numerical simulations. Properly accounting for image degradation effects is of crucial importance for comparisons between observations and numerical models. It finally settles the traditionally perceived conflict between observations and simulations.
der Voort Luc Rouppe van
Wedemeyer-Böhm Sven
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