Alfvén waves in motion - NCAR solar heating research - Movie 2

Related news: http://www2.ucar.edu/news/5007/wave-power-can-drive-suns-intense-heat

Researchers pushed the resolution capabilities of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly's telescope to the limit. These closeups of 2 seconds of data (looped repeatedly) zoom in on an area spanning about 27,000 by 27,000 miles (43,500 by 43,500 km), the same area highlighted by the white box at upper left in the righthand panel of Movie 1. The resulting grainy images provide the first-ever view of data confirming the role of Alfvén waves in transporting a significant amount of energy through the corona. The waves cause high-speed jets of hot material associated with spicules to sway, or wiggle side to side. These new satellite observations have revealed that the wiggling waves are over a hundred times stronger than previously measured, with amplitudes on the order of 12 miles per second (20 km/sec)—enough to heat the Sun's outer atmosphere to over a million degrees and drive the solar wind.

This research sheds light on why the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, is more than 20 times hotter than its surface, and helps bring scientists a step closer to understanding the solar cycle and the Sun's impacts on Earth.

Visualizations by Scott McIntosh, NCAR scientist, of data from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, a package of instruments aboard NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

The study, by scientists at NCAR, Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab, Norway's University of Oslo, and Belgium's Catholic University of Leuven, is published in the journal Nature, July 28, 2011.

Playlist: Movies 1-3: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9A6CCF25945C5A0D

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Alfvén waves
• Sun
• solar
• corona
• heat
• coronal heating
• spicules
• High Altitude Observatory
• Scott McIntosh
• HAO
• NCAR
• UCAR