[Previous] | [Session 12] | [Next]
V. H. Hansteen (Astrophysics Institute, University of Oslo)
Observations of spectral lines formed in the upper chromosphere, transition region, and corona paint a complicated picture open to several interpretations. It seems certain that time-dependent phenomena and the topology of the magnetic field are factors that contribute to the complications: There is a large contrast between network and internetwork emission throughout the region, while at any given location the emission varies with time on several different timescales. There is, perhaps, general agreement that acoustic waves play an important role in powering the upper chromosphere while in the upper regions of the Solar atmosphere magnetic phenomena also contribute to the heating. Given this framework we suggest that the best method of progressing towards untangling the complicated picture drawn by the observations is to proceed by comparing the results of simple physical models with the observations. We will present various models to support this point of view.
This work has been supported by the Norwegian Research Coucil's grant 121076/420, "Modelling of Astrophysical Plasmas"
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: viggoh@astro.uio.no