Background-Subtracted Solar Activity Maps

We introduce the concept of a Background-subtracted Solar Activity Map (BaSAM) as a new quantitative tool to assess and visualize the temporal variation of the photospheric magnetic field and the UV λ 160  nm intensity. The method utilizes data of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and is applicab...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Solar physics 2019-06, Vol.294 (6), p.1-17, Article 71
Main Authors: Denker, C., Verma, M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Astrophysics and Astroparticles
Atmospheric Sciences
Magnetic fields
Photosphere
Photospheric magnetic fields
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Solar activity
Solar cycle
Solar minimum
Solar observatories
Solar physics
Space Exploration and Astronautics
Space Sciences (including Extraterrestrial Physics
Sunspot cycle
Sunspots
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Summary:We introduce the concept of a Background-subtracted Solar Activity Map (BaSAM) as a new quantitative tool to assess and visualize the temporal variation of the photospheric magnetic field and the UV λ 160  nm intensity. The method utilizes data of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and is applicable to both full-disk observations and regions-of-interest. We illustrate and discuss the potential of BaSAM resorting to datasets representing solar minimum and maximum conditions: i) Contributions of quiet-Sun magnetic fields, i.e. the network and (decaying) plage, to solar activity can be better determined when their variation is measured with respect to the background given by “deep” magnetograms. ii) Flaring and intermittent brightenings are easily appraised in BaSAMs of the UV intensity. iii) Both magnetic-field and intensity variations demonstrated that the flux system of sunspots is well connected to the surrounding supergranular cells. In addition, producing daily full-disk BaSAMs for the entire mission time of SDO provides a unique tool to analyze solar cycle variations, showing how vigorous or frail the variations of magnetic-field and intensity features are.
ISSN:0038-0938
1573-093X
DOI:10.1007/s11207-019-1459-x