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Session 35 - Solar Magnetic Fields.
Display session, Tuesday, June 11
Tripp Commons,
The recent discovery that filaments in opposite hemispheres of the Sun tend to exhibit opposite magnetic helicity has prompted a reexamination of the global properties of solar filaments, photospheric magnetic fields, and interplanetary magnetic clouds. It is suggested that observations of East- West asymmetry in high-latitude and mid-latitude photospheric fields can be explained as measurements of the component normal to the surface contaminated by a toroidal component. The toroidal component can also be traced by its effect on chromospheric fine structure and by measurements of the magnetic field direction inside and beneath solar filaments. Since filaments frequently erupt and become interplanetary magnetic clouds, their field direction can be determined by in situ measurements at 1 AU. These measurements are consistent with the field results obtained by traditional remote sensing. The variations in direction of the surface toroidal component over the past three solar cycles are consistent with those expected from naive models.
