Bibcode
DOI
Hirzberger, J.; Vazquez, M.; Bonet, J. A.; Hanslmeier, A.; Sobotka, M.
Bibliographical reference
Astrophysical Journal v.480, p.406
Advertised on:
5
1997
Citations
87
Refereed citations
70
Description
A 90 minute time series of high spatial resolution white-light images of
solar granulation, obtained at the Swedish Vacuum Solar Tower
(Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma), was analyzed to
study how the physical properties of the granules changed with size. The
observational material was corrected for global motions and for the
instrumental profile, and a subsonic filter was applied. A definition of
granular border was adopted using the inflection points of the intensity
of the images, and the granular cells were defined as areas including,
in addition to the granules, one-half of their surrounding intergranular
lanes. Using time series to investigate the average behavior of solar
granulation has three strong advantages: the first is the possibility of
removing the acoustic waves; second, the possibility of estimating the
effect of the variability of seeing on our results; and, third, the
opportunity to attain high statistical significance in the analysis as a
result of the large number of extracted granules (61,138). It is shown
that the granules of the sample can be classified according to their
mean and maximum intensities and their fractal dimension into two
regimes, with diameters smaller than and larger than 1."4, respectively.
A broad transition region in which both regimes coexist was found. The
resolved internal brightness structure of both the granules and the
intergranular lanes shows a linear increase of the number of
substructures with the granular and intergranular areas. The diameters
of these substructures range between our effective resolution limit
(~0."3) and ~1."5, with preferential sizes at 0."65 and 0."55,
respectively. Moreover, it seems that large and small granules are
unevenly distributed with respect to the large-scale vertical flows.
Thus smaller granules are more concentrated along downdrafts whereas
larger ones preferentially occupy the updrafts. Finally, a physical
scenario compatible with the existence of these two granular populations
is discussed.