First high-resolution look at the quiet Sun with ALMA at 3 mm

Friday, November 30, 2018 - 09:30 in Astronomy & Space

Observations of the radio continuum at millimeter (mm) wavelengths provide a unique chromospheric diagnostic. The quiet sun mm-wavelength emission mechanism is free-free and electrons are almost always in local thermodynamic equilibrium (e.g. Shibasaki et al. 2011 and Wedemeyer et al. 2016). The availability of mm-wavelength solar observations with ALMA can advance our knowledge on the chromosphere because of the instrument's unique spatial resolution and sensitivity. In a previous study, the researchers used ALMA full-disk (FD) commissioning data to study the quiet sun under low resolution. However, publications of results from ALMA high-resolution quiet sun observations are rare. The results have recently performed the analysis of such observations; results are reported in Nindos et al. (2018).

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