Related papers: Size matters
The phenomena observed at the Sun have a variety of unique radio signatures that can be used to diagnose the processes in the solar atmosphere. The insights provided by radio obervations are further enhanced when they are combined with…
Ground-based synoptic solar observations provide critical contextual data used to model the large-scale state of the heliosphere. The next decade will see a combination of ground-based telescopes and space missions that will study our Sun's…
The National Academy Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science (CAPS) made a recommendation to study a large/medium-class dedicated space telescope for planetary science, going beyond the Discovery-class dedicated planetary space…
Using the convolution of seeing and diffraction, the relation between seeing and aperture in the visibility of sunspots is explored. It is shown that even telescopes with apertures smaller than 5 centimetres are significantly affected by…
The next decade will be an exciting period for solar astrophysics, as new ground- and space-based instrumentation will provide unprecedented observations of the solar atmosphere and heliosphere. The synergy between modeling effort and…
Telescope and detector developments continuously enable deeper and more detailed studies of astronomical objects. Larger collecting areas, improvement in dispersion and detector techniques, and higher sensitivities allow detection of more…
Advances in instrumentation have made it possible to study sunspots with unprecedented detail. New capabilities include imaging observations at a resolution of 0.1" (70 km on the sun), spectroscopy at ~0.2", and simultaneous…
Radio wavelength observations of solar system bodies reveal unique information about them, as they probe to regions inaccessible by nearly all other remote sensing techniques and wavelengths. As such, the SKA will be an important telescope…
Solar astrometry deals with the accurate measumerent of the solar diameter, and in general with the measurement of the shape of the Sun. During the last decades several techniques have been developed to monitor the radius and the irradiance…
We present the scientific case for a future space-based telescope aimed at very high spatial and temporal resolution imaging of the solar photosphere and chromosphere. Previous missions (e.g., HINODE, SUNRISE) have demonstrated the power of…
The next generation of solar telescopes will enable us to resolve the fundamental scales of the solar atmosphere, i.e., the pressure scale height and the photon mean free path. High-resolution observations of small-scale structures with…
The interface between the bright solar surface and the million-degree corona continues to hold the key to many unsolved problems in solar physics. Advances in instrumentation now allow us to observe the dynamic structures of the solar…
Most major discoveries in astronomy are unplanned, and result from surveying the Universe in a new way, rather than by testing a hypothesis or conducting an investigation with planned outcomes. For example, of the 10 greatest discoveries…
X-ray observatories contribute fundamental advances in Solar System studies by probing Sun-object interactions, developing planet and satellite surface composition maps, probing global magnetospheric dynamics, and tracking astrochemical…
The penumbra of a sunspot is a fascinating phenomenon featuring complex velocity and magnetic fields. It challenges both our understanding of radiative magneto-convection and our means to measure and derive the actual geometry of the…
Identification of the mechanisms responsible for heating the solar chromosphere and corona remains an outstanding problem, one of great relevance to late-type stars as well. There has been tremendous progress in the past decade, largely…
The number of small satellites has grown dramatically in the past decade from tens of satellites per year in the mid-2010s to a projection of tens of thousands in orbit by the mid-2020s. This presents both problems and opportunities for…
The answers to fundamental science questions in astrophysics, ranging from the history of the expansion of the universe to the sizes of nearby stars, hinge on our ability to make precise measurements of diverse astronomical objects. As our…
Over the past decade, sky surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have proven the power of large data sets for answering fundamental astrophysical questions. This observational progress, based on a synergy of advances in telescope…
Solar prominences and filaments (prominences projected against the solar disk) exhibit a large variety of fine structures which are well observed down to the resolution limit of ground-based telescopes. We describe the morphological aspects…