NAOJ: Hinode Captures Record-Breaking Solar Magnetic Field

[bystander]

Hinode Captures Record-Breaking Solar Magnetic Field
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan | 2018 Feb 06

[c][attachment=0]Sunspot_Hinode.jpg[/attachment][/b][/c][hr][/hr]

Astronomers at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) using the HINODE spacecraft observed the strongest magnetic field ever directly measured on the surface of the Sun. Analyzing data for 5 days around the appearance of this record breaking magnetic field, the astronomers determined that it was generated as a result of gas outflow from one sunspot pushing against another sunspot.

Magnetism plays a critical role in various solar phenomena such as flares, mass ejections, flux ropes, and coronal heating. Sunspots are areas of concentrated magnetic fields. A sunspot usually consists of a circular dark core (the umbra) with a vertical magnetic field and radially-elongated fine threads (the penumbra) with a horizontal field. The penumbra harbors an outward flow of gas along the horizontal threads. The darkness of the umbrae is generally correlated with the magnetic field strength. Hence, the strongest magnetic field in each sunspot is located in the umbra in most cases. ...

HINODE continuously tracked the same sunspot with high spatial resolution for several days. This is impossible for ground-based telescopes because the Earth's rotation causes the Sun to set and night to fall on the observatories. These continuous data showed that the strong field was always located at the boundary between the bright region and the umbra, and that the horizontal gas flows along the direction of the magnetic fields over the bright region turned down into the Sun when they reached the strong-field area (Figure 2). This indicates that the bright region with the strong field is a penumbra belonging to the southern umbra (S-pole). The horizontal gas flows from the southern umbra compressed the fields near the other umbra (N-pole) and enhanced the field strength to more than 6,000 gauss. ...

Super-strong Magnetic Field in Sunspots - Takenori J. Okamoto, Takashi Sakurai

• Astrophysical Journal Letters 852(1):L16 (2018 Jan 01) DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aaa3d8
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1712.08700 > 23 Dec 2017

[neufer]

Hinode Captures Record-Breaking Solar Magnetic Field
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan | 2018 Feb 06

The horizontal gas flows from the southern umbra compressed the fields near the other umbra
(N-pole) and enhanced the field strength to more than 6,000 gauss [= 0.6 tesla]. ...

[b][color=#0000FF][size=150]One gauss = one Maxwell per square centimeter[/size][/color][/b]

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[b][color=#FF0000][size=150]One Tesla = 10,000 gauss[/size][/color][/b]

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<<The gauss, abbreviated as G or Gs, is the cgs unit of measurement of magnetic flux density (or "magnetic induction") (B). One gauss is defined as one maxwell per square centimeter. The cgs system has been superseded by the International System of Units (SI), which uses the tesla (symbol T) as the unit of magnetic flux density. One tesla = 10,000 gauss.

The units for magnetic flux Φ, which is the integral of magnetic field over an area, are the weber (Wb) in the SI and the maxwell (Mx) in the cgs system. The conversion factor is 10⁸, since flux is the integral of field over an area, area having the units of the square of distance.
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10⁻⁹–10⁻⁸– gauss – the magnetic field of the human brain
10⁻⁶––10⁻³– gauss – the magnetic field of Galactic molecular clouds
0.25–0.60 gauss – the Earth's magnetic field at its surface
25 gauss – the Earth's magnetic field in its core
50 gauss – a typical refrigerator magnet
100 gauss – an iron magnet
1500 gauss - within a sun spot
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1 to 1.3 tesla – remanence of a neodymium-iron-boron (NIB) magnet
1.6 to 2.2 tesla - saturation of high permeability iron alloys used in transformers
60–70 tesla – a medical magnetic resonance imaging machine
10⁸––10⁹– tesla – the surface of a neutron star
4×10⁹– tesla – the quantum electrodynamic threshold
10¹¹– tesla – the magnetic field of some newly created magnetars
10¹³– tesla – the upper limit to neutron star magnetism
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