Automatic detection and extraction of ultra-fine bright structure observed with new vacuum solar telescope

Abstract

Solar magnetic structures exhibit a wealth of different spatial and temporal scales. Presently, solar magnetic element is believed to be the ultra-fine magnetic structure in the lower solar atmospheric layer, and the diffraction limit of the largest-aperture solar telescope (New Vacuum Solar Telescope; NVST) of China is close to the spatial scale of magnetic element. This implies that modern solar observations have entered the era of high resolution better than 0.2 arc-second. Since the year of 2011, the NVST have successfully established and obtained huge observational data. Moreover, the ultra-fine magnetic structure rooted in the dark inter-graunlar lanes can be easily resolved. Studies on the observational characteristics and physical mechanism of magnetic bright points is one of the most important aspects in the field of solar physics, so it is very important to determine the statistical and physical parameters of magnetic bright points with the feature extraction techniques and numerical analysis approaches. For identifying such ultra-fine magnetic structure, an automatically and effectively detection algorithm, employed the Laplacian transform and the morphological dilation technique, is proposed and examined. Then, the statistical parameters such as the typical diameter, the area distribution, the eccentricity, and the intensity contrast are obtained. And finally, the scientific meaning for investigating the physical parameters of magnetic bright points are discussed, especially for understanding the physical processes of solar magnetic energy transferred from the photosphere to the corona.