DETECTION OF VORTEX TUBES IN SOLAR GRANULATION FROM OBSERVATIONS WITH SUNRISE

Journal Article · Wed Nov 10 00:00:00 EST 2010 · Astrophysical Journal Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/2041-8205/723/2/L180· OSTI ID:21452700

Steiner, O; Franz, M; Bello Gonzalez, N; Nutto, Ch; Rezaei, R; Schmidt, W ^[1]; Martinez Pillet, V; Bonet Navarro, J A ^[2]; Del Toro Iniesta, J C ^[3]; Domingo, V ^[4]; Solanki, S K; Barthol, P; Gandorfer, A ^[5]; Knoelker, M ^[6]

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1. Kiepenheuer-Institut fuer Sonnenphysik, Schoeneckstrasse 6, 79104 Freiburg (Germany)
2. Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, 38200, La Laguna, Tenerife (Spain)
3. Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (CSIC), Apdo. de Correos 3004, 18080 Granada (Spain)
4. Grupo de Astronomia y Ciencias del Espacio, Universidad de Valencia, 46980 Paterna, Valencia (Spain)
5. Max-Planck-Institut fuer Sonnensystemforschung, 37191 Katlenburg-Lindau (Germany)
6. High Altitude Observatory, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO 80307-3000 (United States)

We have investigated a time series of continuum intensity maps and corresponding Dopplergrams of granulation in a very quiet solar region at the disk center, recorded with the Imaging Magnetograph eXperiment (IMaX) on board the balloon-borne solar observatory SUNRISE. We find that granules frequently show substructure in the form of lanes composed of a leading bright rim and a trailing dark edge, which move together from the boundary of a granule into the granule itself. We find strikingly similar events in synthesized intensity maps from an ab initio numerical simulation of solar surface convection. From cross sections through the computational domain of the simulation, we conclude that these granular lanes are the visible signature of (horizontally oriented) vortex tubes. The characteristic optical appearance of vortex tubes at the solar surface is explained. We propose that the observed vortex tubes may represent only the large-scale end of a hierarchy of vortex tubes existing near the solar surface.

• OSTI ID: 21452700
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 723, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/723/2/L180; ISSN 2041-8205
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
CONVECTION
CROSS SECTIONS
HYDRODYNAMICS
PHOTOSPHERE
SOLAR GRANULATION
SUN
TURBULENCE
ATMOSPHERES
ENERGY TRANSFER
FLUID MECHANICS
HEAT TRANSFER
MAIN SEQUENCE STARS
MASS TRANSFER
MECHANICS
SIMULATION
SOLAR ACTIVITY
SOLAR ATMOSPHERE
STARS
STELLAR ACTIVITY
STELLAR ATMOSPHERES