A&A 392, L13-L15 (2002)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20021076

Letter

A comment on "Regular structures of the solar photosphere"

M. P. Rast

High Altitude Observatory, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR is sponsored by the National Science Foundation.) , PO Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307, USA

(Received 11 July (2002) / Accepted 23 July (2002))

Abstract
A recent Letter to the Editor (Getling & Brandt (2002)) suggests that solar granulation is not entirely random, instead showing large scale spatial and long term temporal coherence. The authors cite as evidence the persistence of bright granular size objects in images even after long term temporal averaging, the reoccurrence of bright granules in time series at locations of local maxima in the average image, and the presence of large scale regular structures in time-average images. This paper demonstrates that all three of these observations are consistent with a completely random and changing flow pattern and do not require self organization of the granular flows.

Key words: solar photosphere -- granulation -- convection patterns

© ESO 2002