John E. Boyden

Mount Wilson Synoptic Magnetic Fields: Improved Instrumentation, Calibration, and Analysis Applied to the 2000 July 14 Flare and to the Evolution of the Dipole Field

This paper describes the current status of the 150 foot solar tower telescope program of synoptic observations with an emphasis on the magnetic field data. A newly installed 24-channel system permits routine intercomparison of magnetic fields measured by the ?676.8 nm line used by the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and the ?525.0 nm line used by the 150 foot tower. Two important calibration procedures for treatment of saturation and zero-point offset are described. It is demonstrated that solar rotation can be used to extract the east-west component of the slowly evolving, large-scale magnetic field in a stable fashion. This same analysis produces maps of the neutral line configurations that are well correlated with the positions of quiescent prominences. The analysis is applied to the 2000 July 14 flare and shown to demonstrate that the field was sheared due to the westward-moving intrusion of a region just north of the neutral line along which the flaring occurred. A new method for preparing synoptic charts by averaging without differential rotation smearing is presented. These synoptic charts are combined into a new format termed a supersynoptic chart, which makes possible the identification of systematic long-term trends in the magnetic field evolution. Based on these charts, distinct large-scale events of magnetic field bias opposing the old-cycle dipole field are seen. A statistical method using the skewness in the distribution of the polarity bias as a function of longitude is developed. The coincidence between pulses in this skewness and times of rapid change in the Suns dipole moment is consistent with the idea that a tilt in the orientation of bipolar magnetic regions is responsible for the dipole field reversal. The pulses in skewness are large and limited in number, suggesting the operation of a large-scale instability such as the kink instability.

The Solar Surface Toroidal Magnetic Field

The solar cycle of magnetic activity is thought to be a consequence of a dynamo process in which a dipole field produces a toroidal field from differential rotation (called the Ω-effect) and a twisting process produces a dipole field from the toroidal field (called the α-mechanism). These two magnetic field components are alternately destroyed and recreated in a cycle that lasts in total 22 years. Although the dipole field of the Sun has long been observed and studied, the toroidal field has never before been detected or measured. Our analysis uses solar rotation to yield meridional and east-west components of velocity and magnetic field vectors from the observed line-of-sight projection of the field. Our analysis of 18.5 yr of data from the 150 foot solar tower telescope on Mount Wilson using this method reveals for the first time a clear signal of a reversing toroidal magnetic field on the solar surface with strength comparable to that of the well-observed dipole component of the global magnetic field. The meridional velocities show a zone of convergence near latitudes of 60° during much of the observed period. Such flow convergence implies the subsidence of the toroidally magnetized fluid in this zone. If the toroidal field occupies the bulk of the polar regions of the Suns convective envelope, then there is enough magnetic flux to reverse and rebuild the toroidal field at the convective-radiative interface known as the tachocline that is at the inner boundary of the Suns convective envelope. These two steps—the creation of a toroidal field at high latitudes and a mechanism to reverse the tachocline toroidal field—are parts of the dynamo process that are prominent in models but have not previously had direct observational support.

Solar rotation measurements at Mount Wilson. V - Reanalysis of 21 years of data

This paper describes a thorough reevaluation of the procedures for reducing the data acquired at the Mt. Wilson Observatory synoptic program of solar observations at the 150-foot tower. We also describe a new program of acquiring as many scans per day as possible of the solar magnetic and velocity fields. We give a new fitting formula which removes the background velocity field from each scan. An important new feature of our reduction algorithm is our treatment of the limb shift which permits time variation in this function. We identify the difference between the limb shift along the north-south axis and the east-west axis as potentially being a result of meridional circulation. Our analysis interprets the time variation in the east-west limb shift as being the result of changes in a vertical component of the meridional circulation.The performance of the system improved in 1982 as a result of the installation of a new exit slit assembly. The amplitude of the limb shift variations found prior to 1982 is larger than is easily explained with simple ideas of meridional circulation. However, we have not been able to firmly identify instrumental causes for the variations although small changes in the band-pass of the exit slit assembly could have contributed.We have established a correlation between the observed stray light in the system and a component of the velocity field which is antisymmetric with respect to the solar central meridian. We remove this stray light effect by adding an additional term to the fitting function.Finally, we show that the inclusion of the above improvements allows us to study the torsional oscillations at high latitude using a procedure which can retain the longitude dependent information about the velocity pattern.

Solar Radius Measurements at Mount Wilson Observatory

Possible temporal variations of the solar radius are important as an indicator of internal energy storage and as a mechanism for changes in the total solar irradiance. Variations in the total solar irradiance with an amplitude of 0.1% have been observed from space for more than two decades. Although the variability of this solar output has been definitely established, the detailed dependence of the rate of energy output on the level of solar magnetic activity has not yet been measured with enough continuity and precision to determine the correlation throughout the full solar cycle. While a large fraction of the irradiance variability can be explained by the distribution of solar magnetic activity at the surface, small changes in the solar radius (i.e., contributing to the global variability of the solar envelope) could account for a significant fraction of the remaining variations. Studies of the apparent solar radius variation have reported contradictory results, in the form of both correlations and anticorrelations between the solar radius and, for example, the cycle of sunspot numbers. We present results from more than 30 yr of solar radius measurements obtained from the Mount Wilson synoptic program of solar magnetic observations carried out at the 150 foot (45.72 m) tower. We have used an improved definition of the solar radius that also allows us to study the heliolatitude dependence of the radius measurements. We find that the variations of the average radius are not significantly correlated with the solar cycle over the last three decades. We also compare the heliolatitude dependence of these radius measurements with recent results obtained at the Pic du Midi Observatory in France.

Solar rotation measurements at Mount Wilson. I - Analysis and instrumental effects

We examine the background velocity fields of the Sun as observed at Mount Wilson. The method of velocity reduction of the full-disk Mount Wilson data is outlined. We describe a number of tests that have been carried out in order to find an instrumental origin for short-term rotation variations and a large-scale background line-shift - the ears. No instrumental cause can be found for this ear effect, although such a cause cannot yet be ruled out.

A system for line profile studies at the 150-foot tower on Mount Wilson

We describe enhancements to the hardware and software for the 150-foot tower system on Mt. Wilson which make possible the acquisition of high precision line profile measurements. This system utilizes the 75-foot pit spectrograph with a photomultiplier detector system to scan line profiles repeatedly in order to study variations induced by the passage of waves vertically through the solar atmosphere. Oscillations of line profile parameters with an amplitude as low as 1.7 m s−1 have been detected with this system using integrated sunlight. Phase relations between oscillations of different parts of the line profile are appropriate to upward energy transport. Consistent with the previous conclusion by Mein and Schmieder (1981), we find that the magnitude of the energy transport is compatible with the 5-min oscillations making an important contribution to the heating of the low chromosphere.

The Mount Wilson Ca II K index

It is well established that both total and spectral solar irradiance are modulated by variable magnetic activity on the solar surface. However, there is still disagreement about the contribution of individual solar features for changes in the solar output, in particular over decadal time scales. Ionized Ca II K line spectroheliograms are one of the major resources for these long-term trend studies, mainly because such measurements have been available now for more than 100 years. In this paper we introduce a new Ca II K plage and active network index time series derived from the digitization of almost 40,000 photographic solar images that were obtained at the 60-foot solar tower, between 1915 and 1985, as a part of the monitoring program of the Mount Wilson Observatory. We describe here the procedure we applied to calibrate the images and the properties of our new defined index, which is strongly correlated to the average fractional area of the visible solar disk occupied by plages and active network. We show that the long-term variation of this index is in an excellent agreement with the 11-year solar cycle trend determined from the annual international sunspot numbers series. Our time series agrees also very well with similar indicators derived from a different reduction of the same data base and other \caii K spectroheliograms long-term synoptic programs, such as those at Kodaikanal Observatory (India), and at the National Solar Observatory at Sacramento Peak (USA). Finally, we show that using appropriate proxies it is possible to extend this time series up to date, making this data set one of the longest Ca II K index series currently available.