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Solar Atmospheric Energy Redistribution Across Multiple Classes of Observable Sources of Solar Radiation

Posted on:2015-07-25Degree:Ph.DType:Thesis
University:Florida Institute of TechnologyCandidate:Orange, Norton BriceFull Text:PDF
GTID:2472390017494745Subject:Physics
Abstract/Summary:
This thesis investigates solar atmospheric energy redistribution across multiple classes of observable sources, while carrying out extensive work for increasing the proficiency of solar observational data's scientific return via a semi-autonomous data-acquisition algorithm. Minimal long-term pointing variations between limb and correlation derived pointings of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) and Helioseismic Magnetic Imager instruments provide evidence that the image-center positions achieve single-pixel accuracy on time scales shorter than their characterization. However, daily AIA passband pointing variations indicate autonomous sub-arcsecond co-registration is not yet fully achievable. Three year variations of ultra-violet (UV), far UV, and extreme-UV flux in coronal hole (CH), quiet Sun (QS), active region (AR), and flares (FLs), as well as irradiances, are consistent with expected trends of chromospheric, transition region (TR), and coronal plasmas. Radiative and magnetic energy couplings reveal a self-similarity between CH, QS, and ARs; indicative of a single dominant heating mechanism. FLs provide evidence of a runaway self-organized criticality of flaring activity -- a heating component married to the magnetic field distribution. Large scale statistical properties of BP phenomena, and a detailed comparison of a transition region BP, coronal BP, and blinker, indicated that measuring similar characteristics across multiple event types holds class-predictive power, and is a significant step towards automated multi-class classification of unresolved transient EUV sources. This work directly ties the catastrophic cooling of a cool loop to its non-equilibrium structure (via reconnection at a single footpoint site), and indicates the TR as its heating site due to subsequent plasma evaporation. The first evidence of "S-shape" loop arcades at TR temperatures in QS conditions is provided, as well as that their demise, i.e., relaxed non-potential magnetic fields, leads to small-scale coronal mass ejections.
Keywords/Search Tags:Across multiple, Solar, Atmospheric, Energy, Sources, Magnetic, Coronal
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