A compositional variety of planetary cores provides insight into their core/mantle evolution and chemistry in the early solar system. To infer core composition from geophysical data, a precise knowledge of elastic properties of core‐forming materials is of prime importance. Here, we measure the sound velocity and density of liquid Fe‐Ni‐S (17 and 30 at% S) and Fe‐Ni‐Si (29 and 38 at% Si) at high pressures and report the effects of pressure and composition on these properties. Our data show that the addition of sulfur to iron substantially reduces the sound velocity of the alloy and the bulk modulus in the conditions of this study, while adding silicon to iron increases its sound velocity but has almost no effect on the bulk modulus. Based on the obtained elastic properties combined with geodesy data, S or Si content in the core is estimated to 4.6 wt% S or 10.5 wt% Si for Mercury, 9.8 wt% S or 18.3 wt% Si for the Moon, and 32.4 wt% S or 30.3 wt% Si for Mars. In these core compositions, differences in sound velocity profiles between an Fe‐Ni‐S and Fe‐Ni‐Si core in Mercury are small, whereas for Mars and the Moon, the differences are substantially larger and could be detected by upcoming seismic sounding missions to those bodies.

We report on the first simultaneous observation of an Hα Moreton wave, the corresponding EUV fast coronal waves, and a slow and bright EUV wave (typical EIT wave). Associated with an X6.9 flare that occurred on 2011 August 9 at the active region NOAA 11263, we observed a Moreton wave in the Hα images taken by the Solar Magnetic Activity Research Telescope (SMART) at Hida Observatory of Kyoto University. In the EUV images obtained by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on board the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) we found not only the corresponding EUV fast "bright" coronal wave, but also the EUV fast "faint" wave that is not associated with the Hα Moreton wave. We also found a slow EUV wave, which corresponds to a typical EIT wave. Furthermore, we observed, for the first time, the oscillations of a prominence and a filament, simultaneously, both in the Hα and EUV images. To trigger the oscillations by the flare-associated coronal disturbance, we expect a coronal wave as fast as the fast-mode MHD wave with the velocity of about 570 -800 km s −1 . These velocities are consistent with those of the observed Moreton wave and the EUV fast coronal wave.

A high spatial resolution observation of an emerging flux region ( EFR) was made using a vector magnetograph and a H Lyot filtergraph with the Domeless Solar Telescope at Hida Observatory on 2006 October 22. In H wing images, we could see many Ellerman bombs ( EBs) in the EFR. Observations in two modes, slit scan and slit fixed, were performed with the vector magnetograph, along with the H filtergraph. Using the H wing images, we detected 12 EBs during the slit scan observation period and 9 EBs during the slit fixed observation period. With the slit scan observation, we found that all the EBs were distributed in the area where the spatial gradient of vertical field intensity was large, which indicates the possibility of rapid topological change in the magnetic field in the area of EBs. With the slit fixed observation, we found that EBs were distributed in the areas of undulatory magnetic fields, in both the vertical and horizontal components. This paper is the first to report the undulatory pattern in the horizontal components of the magnetic field, which is also evidence for emerging magnetic flux triggered by the Parker instability. These results allow us to confirm the association between EBs and emerging flux tubes. Three triggering mechanisms for EBs are discussed with respect to emerging flux tubes: 9 out of 21 EBs occurred at the footpoints of emerging flux tubes, 8 occurred at the top of emerging flux tubes, and 4 occurred in the unipolar region. Each case can be explained by magnetic reconnection in the low chromosphere.

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Density of liquid iron alloy under high pressure is important to constrain the amount of light elements in the Earth’s core. Density measurement of solid and liquid Fe3C was performed using X‐ray absorption image technique up to 9.5 GPa and 1973 K. Density of liquid Fe3C increases from 6.94 g/cm3 to 7.38 g/cm3 with a pressure of 3.6–9.5 GPa at 1973 K. The bulk modulus of liquid Fe3C is obtained to be 50 ± 7 GPa at 1973 K. The effect of carbon on the compressibility of liquid iron is similar to that of sulfur, which significantly decreases the bulk modulus of liquid iron. Since carbon dissolution into liquid iron causes reduction of ρ and K0T, carbon could be excluded from the candidates of alloying light elements in the Earth’s outer core.