TY - JOUR
T1 - Intensity contrast of the average supergranule
AU - Langfellner, J.
AU - Birch, A. C.
AU - Gizon, L.
N1 - Funding Information:
The HMI data used are courtesy of NASA/SDO and the HMI science team. The data were processed at the German Data Center for SDO (GDC-SDO), funded by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Support is acknowledged from the SPACEINN and SOLARNET projects of the European Union. We thank B. Löptien for providing comparative data on the HMI Doppler/intensity cross-talk and J. Schou, R. Cameron, T. Duvall, and B. Beeck for the useful discussions and helpful comments on the manuscript. We are grateful to R. Burston and H. Schunker for providing help with the data processing, especially the tracking and mapping. We used the workflow management system Pegasus funded by The National Science Foundation under OCI SI2-SSI program grant #1148515 and the OCI SDCI program grant #0722019.
Publisher Copyright:
© ESO, 2016.
PY - 2016/12/1
Y1 - 2016/12/1
N2 - While the velocity fluctuations of supergranulation dominate the spectrum of solar convection at the solar surface, very little is known about the fluctuations in other physical quantities like temperature or density at supergranulation scale. Using observations from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), we characterize the intensity contrast of solar supergranulation at the solar surface. We identify the positions of ∼ 104 outflow and inflow regions at supergranulation scales, from which we construct average flow maps and co-aligned intensity and magnetic field maps. In the average outflow center, the maximum intensity contrast is (7.8 ± 0.6) × 10-4 (there is no corresponding feature in the line-of-sight magnetic field). This corresponds to a temperature perturbation of about 1.1 ± 0.1 K, in agreement with previous studies. We discover an east-west anisotropy, with a slightly deeper intensity minimum to the east of the outflow center. The evolution is asymmetric in time: the intensity excess is larger eight hours before the reference time (the time of maximum outflow), while it has almost disappeared eight hours after the reference time. In the average inflow region, the intensity contrast mostly follows the magnetic field distribution, except for an east-west anisotropic component that dominates eight hours before the reference time. We suggest that the east-west anisotropy in the intensity is related to the wave-like properties of supergranulation.
AB - While the velocity fluctuations of supergranulation dominate the spectrum of solar convection at the solar surface, very little is known about the fluctuations in other physical quantities like temperature or density at supergranulation scale. Using observations from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), we characterize the intensity contrast of solar supergranulation at the solar surface. We identify the positions of ∼ 104 outflow and inflow regions at supergranulation scales, from which we construct average flow maps and co-aligned intensity and magnetic field maps. In the average outflow center, the maximum intensity contrast is (7.8 ± 0.6) × 10-4 (there is no corresponding feature in the line-of-sight magnetic field). This corresponds to a temperature perturbation of about 1.1 ± 0.1 K, in agreement with previous studies. We discover an east-west anisotropy, with a slightly deeper intensity minimum to the east of the outflow center. The evolution is asymmetric in time: the intensity excess is larger eight hours before the reference time (the time of maximum outflow), while it has almost disappeared eight hours after the reference time. In the average inflow region, the intensity contrast mostly follows the magnetic field distribution, except for an east-west anisotropic component that dominates eight hours before the reference time. We suggest that the east-west anisotropy in the intensity is related to the wave-like properties of supergranulation.
KW - Convection
KW - Sun: helioseismology
KW - Sun: magnetic fields
KW - Sun: photosphere
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U2 - 10.1051/0004-6361/201629281
DO - 10.1051/0004-6361/201629281
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85002990436
SN - 0004-6361
VL - 596
JO - Astronomy and Astrophysics
JF - Astronomy and Astrophysics
M1 - A66
ER -