Solar activity and solar oscillations

Abstract

Helioseismology provides us with the tools to probe solar activity. So that we can consider how the solar oscillations are influenced by that activity, we first consider the phenomena that we associate with the active Sun. The surface of the Sun is not quiet but shows evidence of convection on a wide range of scales from a few hundred kilometres through to several tens-of-thousands of kilometres. The surface temperature shows signs of the convection structures with the temperature in the bright granules being some 100 K to 200 K hotter than the surrounding dark lanes. Sunspots, which are regions of high magnetic field that suppress convective flows, are clearly visible to even quite crude observations. They are several tens-of-thousands of kilometres in diameter and about 2000 K cooler than their surroundings. Ultraviolet and X-ray pictures from satellites show that the higher layers of the solar atmosphere are very non-uniform with bright regions of high activity. Contemporaneous magnetograms show that these regions are associated with sunspots. Flares - regions of magnetic reconnections - are seen at all wavelengths from X-ray through the visible to radio. They are the non-thermal component of the radio emission of the Sun. There are many other indicators of activity on the Sun.