A novel approach is developed to reconstruct the surface magnetic helicity density for the Sun or sun-like stars. The method is applied on the SDO/HMI-observed vector field synoptic data to study the temporal evolution of the Sun’s magnetic helicity density during Solar Cycle 24.
An algorithm, which is to calculate the electric field in order to retrieve the time variations of solar surface magnetic field observed by HMI, was recently developed.
Helicity injection by the continued shear and converging flows contributes to a sigmoid’s sustenance, its core field twist, ans its eventual eruption.
Magnetic flux of opposite polarities belonging to two different emerging/emerged bipoles inside multipolar magnetic regions, can experience “collisional shearing”, a process resulting in strong shearing and fast cancellation of magnetic flux near the polarity inversion line. This type of flux cancellation is found to be the cause of a succession of major flares and CMEs in complex active regions.
Through analyzing simultaneous HMI’s visible-light observations and AIA’s ultraviolet observations, the authors show that a significant amount of acoustic waves with frequencies lower than the theoretical cutoff frequency can channel up along less inclined magnetic field from the photosphere to the chromosphere.
Both magnetic flux emergence and shearing flows occurred before the X9.3 flare on 2017 September 6. This analysis shows that shearing flows played a more significant role in leading to the helicity and electric currents buildup before the major eruption.
Observations of 10 coronal jetlets show that flux cancelation is usually a necessary condition for buildup and triggering of UV/EUV coronal network jetlets, and that network jetlets are plausibly small-scale versions of larger coronal jets.
Physical parameters, including sunspots tilt angles, total magnetic flux, polarity pole separations, and magnetic areas, are measured for most sunspot groups in solar cycles 23 and 24. Differences between Hale and anti-Hale sunspots in separate hemispheres and cycles are studied statistically.
Jets resulting from eruption of minifilaments have lots of similarities to CMEs resulting from eruptions of large-scale filaments. This study on occurrences of jets can shed light on our understanding of what causes CME eruptions.
Synoptic Q-maps, which display a geometric parameter describing the squashing factor of elemental flux tubes, are computed using both HMI and MDI magnetic field observations. These maps are useful for understanding coronal configurations relevant to space weather.