Issue |
A&A
Volume 558, October 2013
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | L4 | |
Number of page(s) | 4 | |
Section | Letters | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201322414 | |
Published online | 10 October 2013 |
Polar plumes’ orientation and the Sun’s global magnetic field
1
Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research,
Max-Planck-Str. 2,
37191
Katlenburg-Lindau,
Germany
e-mail: depatoul@mps.mpg.de; inhester@mps.mpg.de; cameron@mps.mpg.de
2
Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas, École Polytechnique, CNRS,
91128
Palaiseau Cedex,
France
judith.de-patoul@lpp.polytechnique.fr
Received: 31 July 2013
Accepted: 18 September 2013
Aims. We characterize the orientation of polar plumes as a tracer of the large-scale coronal magnetic field configuration. We monitor in particular the north and south magnetic pole locations and the magnetic opening during 2007–2008 and provide some understanding of the variations in these quantities.
Methods. The polar plume orientation is determined by applying the Hough-wavelet transform to a series of EUV images and extracting the key Hough space parameters of the resulting maps. The same procedure is applied to the polar cap field inclination derived from extrapolating magnetograms generated by a surface flux transport model.
Results. We observe that the position where the magnetic field is radial (the Sun’s magnetic poles) reflects the global organization of magnetic field on the solar surface, and we suggest that this opens the possibility of both detecting flux emergence anywhere on the solar surface (including the far side) and better constraining the reorganization of the corona after flux emergence.
Key words: Sun: magnetic fields / Sun: corona
© ESO, 2013
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