Physics Commons^™

Understanding Solar Wind Formation By Identifying The Origins Of In Situ Observations, Samantha Wallace

Physics & Astronomy ETDs

Over the past century, significant progress has made on the subjects of two fundamental unresolved questions in Heliophysics, namely 1) how is the solar corona heated to multi-million-degree temperatures, and 2) how is the solar wind formed, from its origin, to its release and acceleration. While the two are in many ways intertwined, this dissertation focuses on the latter. Our current understanding of solar wind formation has developed largely through relating the general origins of the observed solar wind on global spatial scales to the corresponding observed speed at 1 au. However, we are now at a point where long-standing …

Lettau Affect Colloquium: Or Seeing Natural Philosophy With Len, L. F. Hall

Leonard F. Hall

I was a Senior-Grad student in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison on 19 December 1969. After purchasing a camera to photograph motorcycle trips, I returned to the 13th floor of the Meteorology and Space Science building in time to attend the annual slide show presented by Professor Heinz H. Lettau. Slides were collected from department members to augment his own and Dr. Lettau organized and presented the set. It was a feast of previously unnoticed phenomena that enriched my life. This presentation of photos and composites celebrates a rich contribution of a Doktor Vater …

Relationship Between Photospheric Magnetic Fields And Coronal Activities, Changyi Tan

Dissertations

Coronal emission comes in two forms, a steady component where the corona is heated to million degrees and a much hotter transient component of solar flares. Both components are known to be related to the evolution of surface magnetic fields. This dissertation studies the evolution of photospheric magnetic fields and flow fields and their relation to the properties of these two coronal emission components.

The key issue in the study of the steady coronal emission is the coronal heating problem: how the corona is heated to millions of degrees while the underlying solar photosphere is only a few thousand degrees. …

Mapping The Distribution Of Electron Temperature And Fe Charge States In The Corona With Total Solar Eclipse Observations, Shadia Rifai Habbal, Miloslav Druckmüller, Huw Morgan, Adrian Daw, Judd Johnson, A. Ding, Martina Arndt, R. Esser, V. Rusin, I. Scholl

Physics Faculty Publications

The inference of electron temperature from the ratio of the intensities of emission lines in the solar corona is valid only when the plasma is collisional. Once collisionless, thermodynamic ionization equilibrium no longer holds, and the inference of an electron temperature and its gradient from such measurements is no longer valid. At the heliocentric distance where the transition from a collision-dominated to a collisionless plasma occurs, the charge states of different elements are established, or frozen-in. These are the charge states which are subsequently measured in interplanetary space. We show in this study how the 2006 March 29 and 2008 …

A Novel Metric For Coronal Mhd Models, D. J. Schmit, S. Gibson, G. De Toma, M. Wiltberger, W. J. Hughes, Harlan E. Spence, P. Riley, J. A. Linker, Z. Mikic

Physics & Astronomy

[1] In the interest of quantitatively assessing the capabilities of coronal MHD models, we have developed a metric that compares the structures of the white light corona observed with SOHO LASCO C2 to model predictions. The MAS model is compared to C2 observations from two Carrington rotations during solar cycle 23, CR1913 and CR1984, which were near the minimum and maximum of solar activity, respectively, for three radial heights, 2.5 R⊙, 3.0 R⊙, and 4.5 R⊙. In addition to simulated polarization brightness images, we create a synthetic image based on the field topology along the line of sight in the …