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Creators/Authors contains: "Cao, Wen-Da"

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  1. Abstract Investigating the length scales of granules could help understand the dynamics of granules in the photosphere. In this work, we detected and identified granules in an active region near disk center observed at wavelength of TiO (7057 Å) by the 1.6 m Goode Solar Telescope (GST). By a detailed analysis of the size distribution and flatness of granules, we found a critical size that divides the granules in motions into two regimes: convection and turbulence. The length scales of granules with sizes larger than 600 km follow Gauss function and demonstrate “flat” in flatness, which reveal that these granules are dominated by convection. Those with sizes smaller than 600 km follow power-law function and behave power-law tendency in flatness, which indicate that the small granules are dominated by turbulence. Hence, for the granules in active regions, they are originally convective in large length scale, and directly become turbulent once their sizes turn to small, likely below the critical size of 600 km. Comparing with the granules in quiet regions, they evolve with the absence of the mixing motions of convection and turbulence. Such a difference is probably caused by the interaction between fluid motions and strong magnetic fields in active regions. The strong magnetic fields make high magnetic pressure which creates pressure walls and slows down the evolution of convective granules. Such walls cause convective granules extending to smaller sizes on one hand, and cause wide intergranular lanes on the other hand. The small granules isolated in such wide intergranular lanes are continually sheared, rotated by strong downflows in surroundings and hereby become turbulent. 
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  2. Abstract In this paper, we report the observed temporal correlation between extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) emission and magneto-acoustic oscillations in an EUV moss region, which is the footpoint region only connected by magnetic loops with million-degree plasma. The result is obtained from a detailed multi-wavelength data analysis of the region with the purpose of resolving fine-scale mass and energy flows that come from the photosphere, pass through the chromosphere and finally heat the solar transition region or the corona. The data set covers three atmospheric levels on the Sun, consisting of high-resolution broad-band imaging at TiO 7057 Å and the line of sight magnetograms for the photosphere, high-resolution narrow-band images at helium i 10830 Å for the chromosphere and EUV images at 171 Å for the corona. The 10830 Å narrow-band images and the TiO 7057 Å broad-band images are from a much earlier observation on 2012 July 22 with the 1.6 meter aperture Goode Solar Telescope (GST) at Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) and the EUV 171 Å images and the magnetograms are from observations made by Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) or Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). We report the following new phenomena: (1) Repeated injections of chromospheric material appearing as 10830 Å absorption are squirted out from inter-granular lanes with a period of ∼ 5 minutes. (2) EUV emissions are found to be periodically modulated with similar periods of ∼ 5 minutes. (3) Around the injection area where 10830 Å absorption is enhanced, both EUV emissions and strength of the magnetic field are remarkably stronger. (4) The peaks on the time profile of the EUV emissions are found to be in sync with oscillatory peaks of the stronger magnetic field in the region. These findings may give a series of strong evidences supporting the scenario that coronal heating is powered by magneto-acoustic waves. 
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