We study the properties of power maps of solar acoustic waves filtered with direction filters and phase-velocity filters. A direction filter is used to isolate acoustic waves propagating in a narrow range of directions. The acoustic-power map of the waves filtered with a direction filter shows extended reduced-power features behind magnetic regions with respect to the wave direction. A phase-velocity filter is further applied to isolate waves with similar wave paths. In the power maps of the waves filtered with both a direction filter and a phase-velocity filter, a reduced-power image of a sunspot appears behind the sunspot with respect to the wave direction. The distance between the sunspot and the secondary image is consistent with the one-skip travel distance of the wave packet associated with the phasevelocity filter. The waves filtered with direction and phase-velocity filters at the location of the secondary image could be used to probe the sunspot. In the quiet Sun, spatial fluctuations exist in any acoustic-power map. These fluctuations are mainly caused by interference among modes with the same frequency. The fluctuations are random with two properties: They change rapidly with time, and their magnitude decreases with the square root of the number of frames used in computing the acoustic-power map.
The power of solar acoustic waves in magnetic regions is lower relative to the quiet Sun. Absorption, emissivity reduction, and local suppression of acoustic waves contribute to the observed power reduction in magnetic regions. We propose a model for the energy budget of acoustic waves propagating through a sunspot in terms of the coefficients of absorption, emissivity reduction, and local suppression of the sunspot. Using the property that the waves emitted along the wave path between two points have no correlation with the signal at the starting point, we can separate the effects of these three mechanisms. Applying this method to helioseismic data filtered with direction and phase-velocity filters, we measure the fraction of the contribution of each mechanism to the power deficit in the umbra of the leading sunspot of NOAA 9057. The contribution from absorption is 23.3 ± 1.3%, emissivity reduction 8.2 ± 1.4%, and local suppression 68.5±1.5%, for a wave packet corresponding to a phase velocity of 6.98×10 −5 rad s −1 .
Observed acoustic power in magnetic regions is lower than the quiet Sun because of absorption, emissivity reduction, and local suppression of solar acoustic waves in magnetic regions. In the previous studies, we have developed a method to measure the coefficients of absorption, emissivity reduction, and local suppression of sunspots. In this study, we go one step further to measure the spatial distributions of three coefficients in two active regions, NOAA 9055 and 9057. The maps of absorption, emissivity reduction, and local suppression coefficients correlate with the magnetic map, including plage regions, except the emissivity reduction coefficient of NOAA 9055 where the emissivity reduction coefficient is too weak and lost among the noise.
Several automated optical telescopes have been setup at appropriate longitudes around the globe to study earthshine variations and asteroseismology. The first telescope has been setup at Teide Observatory, Tenerife, Spain in October 2004. The intensity of earthshine relates to the average of Earth's albedo, and in turn relates to the global temperature of the Earth. A global network is necessary because each site can measure the earthshine reflected from only a part of the Earth. The network will also be used for asteroseismology study. It can measure photometric variations of pulsating stars. The long-term and continuous measurements allow the accurate determination of mode frequencies of stellar pulsations, which provides information on the properties of stellar interior.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.