Solar Physics Division Meeting 2000, June 19-22
Session 5. Helioseismology and the Solar Interior
Oral, Chair: J. Harvey, Monday, June 19, 2000, 1:30-3:05pm, Forum

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[5.01] Seismology of the Sun and Other Stars

J. Schou (Stanford)

The last several years have seen impressive improvements in our knowledge of the structure and dynamics of the solar interior. In particular we have started seeing signs of temporal variations extending to significant depths, in addition to the well known near surface changes.

Given these improvements it is natural to ask what we might learn from future observations of global modes. Are there fundamental questions we can expect to answer with the extended operations of MDI and GONG? Are there other questions for which we will require significantly different observations, such as observations of the whole Sun or other ways of detecting the oscillations? In this talk I will briefly review some of the recent observations and try to answer some of these questions.

Given that answering some of the fundamental questions may not be feasible using solar oscillations, it is natural to ask whether some of them might be answered by observing oscillations in other stars. What might we learn from the asteroseismology missions currently proposed or under development and what may be possible in the more distant future using missions such as SISP, currently in the Sun-Earth Connection Roadmap.

The SOI--MDI project is supported by NASA grant NAG5-3077 to Stanford University. SOHO is a mission of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.


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