Issue |
A&A
Volume 678, October 2023
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A184 | |
Number of page(s) | 8 | |
Section | The Sun and the Heliosphere | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202346312 | |
Published online | 20 October 2023 |
Coronal bright point statistics
I. Lifetime, shape, and coronal co-rotation⋆
1
Institute of Physics, University of Graz, Universitätsplatz 5, 8010 Graz, Austria
e-mail: isabella.kraus@uni-graz.at; philippe.bourdin@uni-graz.at
2
Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Schmiedlstraße 6, 8042 Graz, Austria
e-mail: isabella.kraus@uni-graz.at; philippe.bourdin@uni-graz.at
3
European Space Research and Technology Center, Keplerlaan 1, Postbus 299, 2200 AG Noordwijk, The Netherlands
4
Iceye Oy, Maarintie 6, 02150 Espoo, Finland
Received:
3
March
2023
Accepted:
18
July
2023
Context. The corona of the Sun is the part of the solar atmosphere with temperatures of over one million Kelvin, which needs to be heated internally in order to exist. This heating mechanism remains a mystery; we see large magnetically active regions in the photosphere lead to strong extreme UV (EUV) emission in the corona. On much smaller scales (on the order of tens of Mm), there are bipolar and multipolar regions that can be associated with evenly sized coronal bright points (CBPs).
Aims. Our aim was to study the properties of CBPs in a statistical sense and to use continuous data from the SDO spacecraft, which makes it possible to track CBPs over their whole lifetime. Furthermore, we tested various rotation-speed profiles for CBPs in order to find out if the lower corona is co-rotating with the photosphere. Then we compiled a database with about 346 CBPs together with information of their sizes, shapes, appearance and disappearance, and their visibility in the EUV channels of the AIA instrument. We want to verify our methods with similar previous studies.
Methods. We used the high-cadence data of the largest continuous SDO observation interval in 2015 to employ an automated tracking algorithm for CBPs. Some of the information (e.g., the total lifetime, the characteristic shape, and the magnetic polarities below the CBPs) still requires human interaction.
Results. In this work we present statistics on fundamental properties of CBPs along with some comparison tables that relate, for example, the CBP lifetime with their shape. CBPs that are visible in all AIA channels simultaneously seem to be brighter in total and also have a stronger heating, and hence a higher total radiation flux. We compared the EUV emission visibility in different AIA channels with the CBP’s shape and lifetime. From the tracking algorithm we confirm a strict co-rotation of the CBPs with the photospheric differential rotation.
Conclusions. The tracked CBPs have a typical lifetime of about 1–6 h, while the hottest and brightest ones seem to exist for significantly longer time, up to 24 h. Furthermore, the merging of two CBPs seems not to have an influence on the overall size of the persisting CBP. Finally, fainter and cooler CBPs tend to have only weaker magnetic polarities, which clearly supports a coronal bright point heating mechanism based on magnetic energy dissipation.
Key words: Sun: corona / Sun: UV radiation / methods: observational / methods: statistical
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© The Authors 2023
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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